E-I-E-I-Oh, Velda E-Book

Ron Miller

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Velda
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 55

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Private investigator Velda visits her cousin's farm, where she finds more than pigs, chickens, cows, and food. There's also a missing rich widow.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

E-I-E-I-OH, VELDA!, by Ron Miller

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2024 by Ron Miller.

Original publication by Wildside Press, LLC.

wildsidepress.com

E-I-E-I-OH, VELDA!,by Ron Miller

I have never had any special grudge against animals. After all, I had a cat while I was growing up though circumstances don’t make it easy for me to have a pet now, not the least of which is not being able to afford cat food. I couldn’t keep a goldfish alive and even my fern is looking peaked. Where I live, too, in the middle of Greenwich Village, doesn’t get me much quality time with animals. There is Omar, the police horse my friend Officer Mazursky rides and who is pleasant enough, but if you have ever read my adventure at the circus you will know how I feel about horses. They are much too dumb to be so big and have feet like cookie cutters. Other than that, about all there is are pigeons and rats, not counting the ones I have sent up the river.

So you can imagine how I felt when I got a letter from my cousin, Axel Bellinghausen, inviting me to visit for a weekend. Axel, along with his wife, runs a farm about sixty miles outside the city that is probably lousy with pigs and chickens and God knows what else. On the other hand, it had been a long time since I last had a paying client and had been wondering where my next cheeseburger was coming from. A good feed would be worth the company of some livestock for a few days. No matter how I feel about them personally, cows and pigs and chickens are good to eat.

A bus ticket came with the letter, thank goodness, and as soon as I could throw together an overnight bag I was on my way. Having little interest in the scenery which, once we had crossed the river, was not much more than grass and trees and whatnot, though the trees were all very pretty given that it was early Fall, I buried my nose (which is a very cute one) in a paperback mystery I’d picked up at the Greyhound station and by the time I’d figured out who’d committed the axe murder there I was, in Pumpkin Junction or whatever it’s called.

As we slowed to a stop I saw a big lug waving at the bus. I recognized him as my cousin, even though I had not seen him since I was a kid. I grabbed my bag from the overhead rack and headed for the door. I was the only passenger getting off, which didn’t surprise me. Most of the other passengers had glanced out their windows as the bus stopped and then quickly buried their faces in their newspapers, apparently vaguely embarrassed by what they saw. Which admittedly was not very much. What there was of the town—if “town” is the right word—looked discarded, like it had been dropped onto the ground from about fifty feet up.

I must have been staring because the driver behind me said, “I got a schedule to keep, lady,” so I kept on moving.

We Bellinghausens have always tended toward height. I’m an even six feet in my bare feet but I found myself looking up into Axel’s big red face as I stepped off the bus and found my free hand being squashed by a fist the size of a country ham.

“Great to see you again, Velda! Been an awful long time!”

“Sure has, Axel,” I replied, unsure of just when it was that I had last confronted my cousin.

“Jesus God!” he said, stepping back away from me a pace or two and scrutinizing me like he might judge a blueberry pie at the county fair. “They sure do grow ’em skinny in New York! Ain’t got enough meat on you to make a healthy sparrow! Betty-Lou is sure going to have her hands full fattenin’ you up!”

That sounded hunky dory to me since getting fed was the main reason I was there. But gazing up and down my cousin’s prodigious carcass I was glad it was to be only for a weekend if he was a product of her cooking, and I was pretty sure he was. I might be feeling a little undernourished at the moment but by the same token I had no special desire to look like Kate Smith, either.

“And how are things with you and Betty-Lou and all of the pigs and chickens and moo cows?”

“Oh, well… Betty-Lou and me, we’re just fine.”

I could tell by that italicized “we’re” that someone wasn’t just fine at all and wondered if the reason Axel had invited me wasn’t just because he missed my baby blue eyes and sparkling personality.

* * * *

Axel trundled me off in a rusty pickup truck to his farm, which was, as I had expected, just lousy with pigs and chickens and moo cows. All around me were barns and silos and what I figured were chicken coops and lots of fences from behind which cows and horses were staring at me. In addition to the wildlife there was a skinny little guy who couldn’t have been all but five foot two dragging big sacks of something or another out of a shed. He looked too frail and old, with his haggard face, frizzy white hair and all to be lugging around such weight but he seemed to be doing okay.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Him? Oh, that’s Clem, Clem Clinker. He’s our new hired hand. I guess you’ll be meeting him later.”

At that moment a chubby red-faced woman came bouncing out of the house toward us. I figured it was Betty-Lou, whom I had never met before. She embraced me like a long-lost child and since she barely came up to my sternum, my first real impression of her was limited to the fact that she smelled like pancakes and had a crooked part in her hair.

“My goodness!” Betty-Lou said, stepping back a few steps so she could see all of me. “Ain’t enough meat on them bones! We gotta do something about that!”

I figured that I was going to get tired of hearing comments about my lack of meat before the weekend was out. I mean, I admit I’m built more like a Vogue model than Jayne Mansfield but I’m not exactly a circus freak, either. Streamlined. That’s how I like to think of myself.

Betty-Lou took me by a hand and dragged me toward the house, which looked exactly like Dorothy’s place in The Wizard of Oz before the tornado, while Axel got my bag from the back of the truck.