The Trouble with Turkeys (Zoe Donovan Mystery Book 2) (6 page)

“Did you say fifty?” I gasped. “Why in the hell is someone with fifty million dollars working a turkey farm?”

“Apparently he liked turkeys,” Zak informed me. “I spoke to Margaret earlier, and she said her grandfather hadn’t always been rich. In fact, he grew up quite poor. He took out a loan to buy the land where the farm now sits. Charles inherited a load of money from a grandfather he barely knew before Margaret was born.
Although Margaret never met her grandfather, she shared that according to her mother, Charles clawed his way from poverty and developed a stringent work ethic as a young man. It was very important to him that people work for and earn what they have. He hadn’t felt he’d earned the money he inherited, so he didn’t really want it. He hasn’t touched a single penny of it in all the years he’s had it. Never spent it; never invested it. It’s just sitting in a bank collecting one-percent interest.”

“Do you find that odd?” I asked.

“I did, but what’s even odder is the lack of employees. Even if the guy loved turkeys, you’d think he’d hire someone to do the dirty work. I searched the records and found that prior to a week ago, the farm had five staff,” Zak said, “a farm manager named Bill Parker and four assistants who worked part- time. Bill and the others were promised a percentage of the profit from the sale of the birds in exchange for a reduction in pay. The problem is, Charles laid everyone off a week before he died.”

“Charles was going to rip them off,” I decided. “The guy had fifty million dollars. What exactly was his deal?”

“That I don’t know. What I do know is that the former employees hired an attorney who was going to sue Charles for what they were promised, plus some.”

“So the former employees could all be suspects. If the lawsuit wasn’t going well, one or more of them might have decided to confront him on their own.”

“Exactly. Mason gave me a list of the workers when I inquired about former employees. Of the five men laid off, I’ve established reliable alibis for all but two: the farm manager, Bill Parker, and a recent hire, Glen Collins.”

“So two more suspects.” I groaned.

“Looks like it, which brings the total back up to ten.”

“Eleven
,” I added as I read the letter in my hand. “It looks like Charles was being sued by someone other than his ex-employees.”

“Really? Who?”

“Some guy by the name of Raymond Wells. He owns a restaurant named Ray’s and claims he ordered a dozen heritage turkeys for a high-class fund-raiser that was held at his establishment two months ago, but instead of receiving heritage turkeys he was delivered regular ones. He claims that the mix-up completely ruined his event and cost him tens of thousands of dollars in potential business. He was suing Charles for fifty thousand dollars.”

I knew that heritage turkeys were considered to be the Rolls-Royces of turkeys, and upscale customers paid a pretty penny for them. If I’d paid upward of a hundred dollars a bird and was delivered a common, twenty-dollar one, I’d be pretty mad, too.

“Who serves turkey at a high-class fund-raiser in September?” Zak asked.

I shrugged. “It doesn’t seem like an obvious choice unless they planned to prepare them in some special way. Still, would the guy have been mad enough to kill Charles over them?”

“Wells must know that if he killed Charles he’d never get his money. It sort of makes him an unlikely suspect.”

“Unless he lost the suit and was out for revenge. I say we should add him to the list and check him out.”

“Agreed.” Zak added his name to the list he kept on his laptop. “The others should be back any minute. We should button this up and pick up where we left off tomorrow.”

I started arranging the desk to resemble the way we had found
it. “Ellie is making fettuccini for dinner. Do you want to join us?”

“Yeah. I’ll drop you off, head home, shower and change, and then come back over. I’ll bring the wine.”

“I have wine.”

“Yeah, but mine doesn’t come in a box.”

“My wine isn’t in a box,” I defended.

Zak just smiled.

“It’s not,” I insisted.

“Tree cutting three years ago,” Zak reminded me, “I came home for the holiday and Levi invited me to meet you guys up at Tolleys’ Peak. When I got there, you were all drinking wine out of paper cups. When I made a comment about that, you pointed out that the wine had originated in a box, so what difference did it make?”

“That was different. We were on a
picnic
,” I emphasized. “You do understand the concept of a picnic?”

“I do. I’m just giving you a bad time. I can’t remember the last time I had as much fun as I did that day on the mountain. I’m really looking forward to boxed wine and chili dogs again this year. I haven’t even had a tree the past couple of years.”

“Why not?”

Zak shrugged. “I was overseas and there wasn’t anyone to share the holiday with, so I didn’t bother.”

“But you love Christmas.” When we were growing up, Zak was known for his ridiculous antics during the holiday season. “You were always the one to plan holiday outings and give everyone outlandish presents.”

“Do you still have those sweatshirts I bought you when we were in high school?” Zak laughed.

“Heck no,” I lied. I actually did have them, but I’d never admit it after the fuss I put up when Zak insisted on giving them to me. I will admit to being diminutive in size, but I found it cruel that Zak bought me clothing that obviously originated in the children’s department while he gifted both Levi and Ellie with presents they could actually use.

“Too bad. I especially liked the one with the reindeer.”

I threw the pen that was sitting on the desk at Zak’s chest. “Buying those stupid sweatshirts was mean and you know it.”

“I know,” Zak admitted. “I really am sorry, but you’d get so mad. It was adorable.”

I turned off the desk lamp and picked up the backpack I’d left on the floor next to my feet. The last thing I wanted to do was awaken the complicated emotions I carried as a result of my tumultuous relationship with the boy Zak had once been. “I guess we should head out. Chances are the heirs will be back soon.”

“I’m ready if you are. I’ve been thinking about Ellie’s homemade sauce ever since you mentioned it.”

By the time Zak and I returned to the boathouse, Levi had arrived and was helping Ellie with dinner. Zak dropped me off and then headed home to shower and change. I couldn’t help but overhear bits of the conversation my two best friends were having as I combed my hair and dressed in comfortable jeans and a sweater. I was unable to make out every word that was said, but I picked up on enough to get the gist of it.

As I mentioned before, Levi has recently hooked up with a yoga instructor who moved to town and opened a studio a few months ago. Being a fitness buff himself, his choice of romantic partner makes total sense. Levi has always tended to play the field, and his conquests have changed more often than the seasons, but based on the way he was going on and on about his new squeeze, I guessed this particular relationship had matured beyond the casual dating phase.

I felt bad for Ellie. Based on the way Levi was gushing over Barbi
e, I was convinced he didn’t have a clue that Ellie had developed feelings of a romantic kind for him. At first I suspected Levi
had
picked up on Ellie’s subtle signals, prompting him to enter into his rapidly evolving relationship with Barbie as a way to diffuse the potentially complicated situation, but Levi wasn’t cruel. If he was aware of Ellie’s feelings, he wouldn’t be going on and on the way he was.

I tied back my hair in a scarf and made my way down from my loft bedroom to the kitchen. “Something smells wonderful,” I complimented.

“I made stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer while we wait,” Ellie informed me.

“They smell great.”

“They need a few more minutes in the oven. How was your first day on the farm?”

“Interesting.” I sat down on one of the bar stools that lined the counter separating the kitchen from the main living space. Levi poured me a glass of wine and slid it across to me.
“We managed to whittle down the suspect list from fourteen to eight, but then we discovered three new suspects, so now we’re back up to eleven.”

“Anyone care to fill me in?” Levi asked.

I was tired and really didn’t want to rehash the whole thing yet again, but I could tell Levi was curious, and if it had been me in the dark, I’d want to be filled in on all the juicy details.

“I found out that Charles Tisdale, the man who owned the turkey farm where Jeremy and I have been temporarily employed, was murdered. It looks like he was hit over the head with a blunt object the night before Jeremy was contacted about the job. I’m not a hundred percent certain, but it appears that no one, with the possible exception of the attorney, realizes the man was murdered.”

“So why are
you
investigating?” Levi asked.

“I needed a distraction,” I explained. “Besides, I never can resist a good mystery.”

“I guess that’s true,” Levi acknowledged.

“So who are the suspects?”

I filled him in on the whole complicated affair, listing all the players in the most logical order I could come up with.

“You realize this sounds like a cheesy movie?” Levi laughed. “Guy dies and leaves four children by three women, as well as a mistress and a love child.”

“Holly is Dolly’s daughter and unrelated to Charles, so therefore not a love child,” I corrected, “but otherwise you’re spot-on. It does seem like the plot for a cheesy movie.”

“Okay, so who was eliminated and who remains?” Levi asked.

“Zak eliminated Holly, who arrived after the death. Leroy never married, so we eliminated his wife. W
e also eliminated Peggy’s husband and Brent’s mother, both of whom are dead. Lola lives in Los Angeles and Penelope in Florida.”

“How are you keeping all of this straight?” Levi wondered.

“I wrote everything down.” I showed him my notebook. I passed it across the counter for his consideration. There were a lot of suspects, which made the task of investigating each for motive and alibi complicated, so I’d decided to group them into those who were heirs, those who were on the property but were not heirs, and those who were related in some way but were neither heirs nor present at the time of Charles’s death.

“Do these people know you’re investigating them?” Levi wondered.

“No. Zak is pretending to be a prospective buyer for the farm. So far no one seems to suspect that there’s anything more than that going on.
In fact I don’t think anyone is paying much attention to any of us. The group that has assembled seems preoccupied with their own parts in the drama. Zak and Jeremy have both been wandering around talking to people and no one has said a word about it.”

“Speaking of Zak, he just pulled up, and the mushrooms are done.” Ellie removed a tray of sizzling appetizers from the oven.

“Those look fantastic.” Levi tried to pick one up off the cookie sheet, but Ellie slapped his hand.

“You’re going to burn yourself. Wait until I can put them on a serving plate.”

“Did you think to bring horseradish?” Levi asked.

“I did.”

“A woman after my own heart.” Levi grinned, and Ellie smiled shyly.

It’s really odd for me to see Ellie acting so tentative around Levi. Like I said before, the three of us have been best friends since kindergarten. Ellie has always treated Levi like a brother. As strange as it is for me to watch her awkwardness around the boy she used to throw snowballs at, it must be
really
strange for her.

“Let me help you with that.” Levi took the hot tray from Ellie. “You’ve been slaving away since I’ve been here. Pour yourself a glass of wine and relax.”

Ellie actually blushed as Levi took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and gave her a friendly swat on the butt as he pointed her toward the living area.

“As long as you’re both here,” Levi began as he slid the mushrooms onto a serving platter, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about Thanksgiving. I thought I’d ask Barbie to join us, if you don’t mind.”

Ellie’s smile faded and I was saved having to reply as Zak walked through the front door bearing wine I was sure would cost more than my weekly grocery budget. Every year my dad, grandfather, and me, Ellie and her mom, and Levi, who has no family in town, get together to prepare a giant feast. In all of the years we’ve been doing it, none of us has ever brought a date, even though many of the times one or more of us has been involved in a relationship of one type or another. Thanksgiving has always been family time, so Levi asking to bring a date was huge. I had planned to ask the gang about including Zak this year, but I think his inclusion would have met with approval across the board, while Barbie’s attendance promised nothing but controversy.

“That’s fine,” Ellie managed a plastic smile as she answered Levi. “And Zak, you’re invited as well.”

“Invited where?” Zak asked, because he hadn’t been privy to the first part of the conversation.