Criminal Record: Collected Crime and Mystery Stories by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

The Peahen

T he peahen appeared in Dex's barn the same day he had trouble with the tractor. It was there when he came back from scraping the driveway. The gravel was always rutted and uneven after a winter under the snowplow. So, every year, three weeks after the last melt, Dex ran the scraper over it. He liked how a farmer’s life was regular that way.

Dex knew what kind of bird it was because he’d seen a picture at the library. Not that Dex was a reader. It was August, and there were three patrons ahead of Maeve in the checkout line, and the library was air-conditioned. So that the librarian wouldn’t ask him to leave, Dex had flipped through a book that had been left out on a table. The book had thick pages, and photos, all of birds.

The Peterses needed only one car. Dex drove Maeve on her errands—to the market, to the doctor, and, once a week, to the library. He had never liked the idea of her alone in town.

The book said a peahen was a female peacock. That didn’t make sense to Dex. It was like saying a doe was a female buck instead of a female deer. There had to be a word that applied to both. Otherwise what was a peacock? A male peahen?

The peahen in the barn was a dull green. At least it would have been dull on a peacock. For a peahen, it was probably average. Could even be spectacular, for all Dex knew. The book hadn’t said anything about that.

Maeve hadn’t been one for bright colors. At least that’s what Dex had thought. But then she’d started wearing that scarf. Red and purple twined around, colors that raised his pulse just looking at them. The store in town didn’t sell anything like it.

Dex noticed the peahen when he was maneuvering the tractor into the barn—tricky with the scraper attached on the front. While it was the first exotic bird to ever wander onto his property, Dex wasn’t in the frame of mind to appreciate it. His barn and house sat on a slight rise. When he was driving up the incline, the tractor had started making that horrible racket.

The noise upset Dex. He needed the tractor to plow his acreage, plant his seed, harvest his crops. A farmer’s whole life depended on his tractor.

The tractor hadn’t been all that quiet to begin with. Even before the noise started, it was so loud, Dex had trouble hearing anything else when he was driving it. Not birds, not the occasional car down the dirt road, not a person walking to the farm next door.

It seemed to Dex that the noise meant big trouble. The engine, like the rest of the tractor, was Italian, as notoriously temperamental as those people.

And it wasn’t just the noise. The tractor was a Bendorini, a company that had gone into bankruptcy right after Dex bought the tractor. Another company had bought the name and liabilities. The closest authorized dealership was in Boise.

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