A few minutes later, we filed out the front door. I waited as Doc locked it behind us, leaving his porch light on but the rest of the place dark.
“What about Cooper?” I asked him, feeling bad at the thought of the grumpy detective coming home to a dark house on Christmas Eve.
I really needed to get over this newfound concern for the law dog. More often than not Cooper snapped his teeth at me when I tried to pet him. For some reason, though, I had a feeling that deep inside his barbed wire–wrapped heart hid a lonely flea-sized seed of love waiting to grow.
Then again, I had a history of misjudging men. Case in point, the two shitheads who had easily jumped from my bed into my sister’s behind my back.
Doc put his arm around my shoulders as we descended the porch steps. “Last I heard, Coop was staying at his mom’s tonight.”
“Good.” I handed him my keys. “Thanks for driving.”
He scowled at the road. “It’s going to be ugly going up Strawberry, but the chains should help.”
I looked at my SUV. “Is that a trident strapped on my roof?”
“Yep. That was Cornelius’s idea.”
We all piled into my Honda. Doc and Harvey took the front seats. I scooted into the back seat, playing monkey in the middle between Natalie and Cornelius. Doc backed out of his driveway. We traveled the few blocks to Aunt Zoe’s with no problems thanks to a neighbor who had a plow blade on the front of his old Jeep and a love for shoving snow around. In storms like this bugger, the big plows couldn’t afford to waste time scraping through the neighborhoods when they had to keep the main roads clear for emergency vehicles.
Natalie ran inside Aunt Zoe’s house with me to get Addy’s chicken. We returned five minutes later covered with feathers and sporting several peck marks. Elvis squawked from the cat carrier as I stuffed the caged beast in the back and slammed the hatch.
“Damned bird!” I grumbled and raced around to the car door Natalie held open for me.
“Everything go okay in there?” Doc asked, his eyes creased with laughter as he watched me settle in via the rearview mirror.
“Stupid Tyrannosaurus-chicken!” I snarled. “I should have left her there in the dark. That would teach the puny dinosaur a lesson.”
“Chickens can actually see better than humans,” Cornelius told me as I buckled up. “They have two additional types of cones in their eyes that allow them to distinguish both violet and ultraviolet light.”
Harvey snorted. “Doc has a cone that can pick out Violet in the dark, too, don’t ya?”
I pinched the old buzzard’s arm. “Keep it up and I’ll dump you in the snow at the top of Strawberry.”
Harvey’s snort morphed into a chortle. “I got ‘er all hot and bothered fer ya,” he told Doc. “Ya owe me one.”
I glared at Cornelius. “What’s with you and all of this chicken trivia? Did you major in chickens in college or something?”
He plucked a feather from my hair, letting it fall at our feet. “My grandmother had chickens in Louisiana when I was young. Gallus gallus domesticus are fascinating to observe during play, particularly when they joust.”
Natalie leaned forward to look at him around me. “Chickens joust?” At his nod, she added, “Like Knights of the Round Table sort of jousting? Or—”
“Stop!” I held up my hands. “There will be no more talk of chickens until we get to Rapid, understand?”
Elvis let out a loud squawk from the back.
I turned in the seat and grabbed the thick emergency blanket Doc had packed, tossing it over the cat carrier. “Go to sleep, Foghorn.”
“Foghorn Leghorn was a rooster,” Cornelius started.
I held my fist in front of his face. “Don’t make me pop you in the nose, Ghost Whisperer.”
He stared at my fist, his cornflower blue eyes crossed. “You’re bleeding, Violet.”
Was I? I scowled at the wounds on the back of my hand. “That Chicken-saurus Rex has a mean pecker.”
Harvey hooted. Before he could spit out whatever bawdy line that was hovering on the tip of his tongue, I leaned forward and tugged on his ear. “Zip it, ol’ timer. Now give me one of those tissues in the glove box, please.”
“Are you okay?” Doc asked, glancing in the mirror.
“Yeah.” I took the tissue Harvey held out to me. “Elvis resisted arrest is all. The cat carrier must have reminded her of a previous cage she was stuffed into before Addy sprung her from the chicken farm.”
I looked over Natalie’s hands, but she seemed to be better at dodging Elvis’s pecks than I was.
Something barked several times in succession in the front seat.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Coop’s barkin’ at me.” Harvey pulled out his cell phone that was still sounding repeated “woofs” at him, ending any further chicken chatter. “What’s shakin’, Coop?” he answered the call.
I glanced at Natalie. She turned away and stared out the window, her jaw taut.
“Yep, we’re skedaddlin’ right now,” Harvey told his nephew, then paused to listen. “No, I don’t mean the royal ‘we.’ I mean me, Doc, Sparky, Corny, and Nat.” Another pause. “I decided they needed my help, that’s why.” More silence from Harvey’s end. “No, this has nothin’ to do with yer mother’s cookin’, although her Christmas ham is always more like pork jerky. Makes my jaw ache to eat it.” Harvey snorted at something Cooper said in reply to that, and then he frowned at Doc.
He held his phone away from his ear a moment later. “Coop says to tell ya that he just heard over the scanner there’s a plow headin’ up Strawberry. If ya can stick close to it, the driver is supposed to clear the road all of the way to the Rimrock Highway junction where there’s a plow workin’ that section down into Rapid.”
“Got it,” Doc said, his focus on the snow-covered road.
The sky was beginning to darken in the east. At
