“What in the hell is wrong with that chicken?” Natalie said, turning around in her seat. She pulled off the blanket that I’d used to cover the cat crate, sending tiny feathers floating through the cab.
The squawking grew even louder, followed by thumping and clanging as Elvis tried to escape the carrier through the closed cage door.
“Let me out,” I said, nudging her leg.
“What are you going to do?” Doc asked.
“Calm her down somehow before she breaks a wing.”
Natalie frowned at me. “What do you think you are, a chicken whisperer?”
“Maybe. Open the damned door, mother clucker.”
“Okay, okay.” She spun back around and opened the door, wrapping her scarf tighter around her neck as she stepped out into the snow and wind.
Before following her, I looked back at Cornelius. “Thank you, by the way.”
“For what?”
“Distracting me again.”
His crooked smile made a brief appearance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Violet.”
I joined Natalie, my boots sinking a couple of inches into the snow piling up in the plow’s wake. The freezing wind cut through my wool coat like it was peppered with holes.
Doc joined us, pulling on his gloves. “Come on.”
The three of us made our way around the back of the SUV, hunched partway over to stave off the breath-stealing wind that tore at our coats and pelted us with snow. Doc opened the back door and dragged the cat carrier to the edge of the bumper.
I squatted and peered into the carrier. Elvis was still fluttering and flapping in the tight space. I thought I saw a streak of something dark on her white feathers. My heart tightened. Was that blood? Shit! If anything happened to the crazy bird, Addy would never forgive me.
“What should we do?” Natalie hollered over the wind.
“Addy told me once that she thinks Elvis is claustrophobic. Maybe if I let her out in the back end for a little bit, she’ll calm down.”
“Claustrophobic?” Doc repeated. “That doesn’t make any sense. Elvis likes to roost in small spaces, like your closet.”
That was true. I tried to hold the cat carrier still as the bird jostled around inside, willing her to chill out. “Well then,” I told him, “maybe she needs to go see a man about a mule.”
He stared at me for several beats, and then let out a loud laugh.
“I’m serious. Addy has her potty trained. Maybe she doesn’t want to pee in the cat carrier.”
Natalie bumped my arm. “Did you bring her leash?”
“I thought I told you to grab it.”
“No, you told me to get Elvis’s favorite sweater. The one your mom made with the poodle on it.”
“Crap. I forgot the leash.” The carrier shook in my hands as Elvis went ape-shit again. “If I let her go, you think she’ll stick around?”
“Where’s she going to go in this storm?” Natalie yelled. “Out for an evening stroll to try and pick up a rooster or two?”
“Maybe she’ll cross the road,” I snapped back, pointing at the trees lining the ditch over there. I could barely see the pines through the snow whipping and churning around us.
Doc laughed again. “Do you hear yourself?”
I swatted his chest and then leaned down and popped open the cage door, reaching inside to grab the silly bird. Something pinched the webbing between my thumb and index finger through my glove.
“Ouch!” I yelled, yanking my hand back. My glove caught on the cage door, pulling the carrier with it. The cage slid forward and landed upside down on the snow.
“Son of a peach!” I yelled.
Doc bent down to scoop it up, but Elvis made her escape before he got it back topside. Natalie reached for the bird, but she shot off across the snowy ditch, running toward the trees like a jailbird who’d scaled the prison wall.
“Elvis, no!” I yelled, starting after her.
Doc caught my arm and dragged anchor.
“Doc, let go! I have to—”
“Violet,” he hollered above the storm. “You are not following that chicken into the trees and getting lost in this blizzard!”
I frowned after the bird, trying to see her white tail feathers through the whirling snow. My heart pounded in my ears, blocking out the whistling wind.
Hell’s bells.
Elvis was gone.
“Fuck!”
Chapter Nine
US Highway 385, twenty-one miles out of Deadwood
7:35 p.m.
It was going to be a blue, blue Christmas without Elvis.
Crud.
I could avoid telling Addy that her chicken had run away in the middle of a snowstorm and most likely frozen her tail feathers off. That would delay the aftermath of tears for the time being, but the truth would come out as soon as we returned home to a chicken-less basement.
Damn. There’d be no end to the buckets of drama and hours of blame-laced wails.
I buried my face in my gloves. It’d be like reliving Christmas break back when fifteen-year-old Susan stole my driver’s license and Mom’s car keys, snuck out after midnight, and got busted by the cops as she was spinning doughnuts in the school parking lot with a car full of her friends all sloshed on peppermint schnapps.
Susan’s drunken accusations later that night about how her illicit actions were all my fault because I’d refused to sneak her over to her friend’s party had turned my mom into a fire-breathing dragon. Quint had been on a photography field trip to the Everglades for college credits that year, so he’d lucked out, dodging the ear-ringing fireworks.
Good ol’ Susan. She was such a pro at pissing all over our happy family moments. Just once I’d like to … Never mind. This was not the time to reminisce about Susan’s history of wreaking holiday havoc. I had a bigger problem at the moment. Bigger even than a missing chicken.
I lowered my hands and staggered around to the front of my rig, leaning into the blasts of cold air.
“Winter wonderland, my ass,” I bellyached, my teeth chattering while the frigid
