“Robespierre,” she said softly. “He’s not in the yard.”
“He would have gone for the coyote. Protecting his flock.” Joe gave her a grim look. “Not exactly an even battle.”
She stepped inside the hen house, surveying the empty perches and nest boxes. “Where are they?”
“Probably ran when the coyote came in. That gate was open wide enough that some of them could have gotten away.”
MG pressed a hand to her mouth. “They’re gone? All my chickens are gone?” Her chest felt suddenly tight. She drew in a gasping breath.
Joe put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him so that she felt the warmth of his skin against her suddenly cold body. “They’re probably around in the trees. Some of them anyway. They’ll probably come back once it gets light. And we can look around for them now if you want.”
“I want,” she managed to say around the massive lump in her throat. Her skin still felt cold, and she was having some trouble breathing. The two dead hens looked like heaps of white feathers in the yard.
He squeezed her shoulder quickly. “Come on, then. Let me grab a flashlight and we’ll see if we can find them. If they ran away, they’re probably close by. Maybe nesting in the bushes.” He trotted to the back porch, then re-emerged with the flashlight in his hand. He put his hand on her arm, pulling her back gently from the almost-empty henhouse.
Tears pricked at her eyes as she stepped over the chicken bodies. She folded her arms across her stomach. “Do you think it killed the others too?”
Joe ran the flashlight quickly around the yard. “Doesn’t look like it. I don’t see any more of them in here anyway.” He stepped through the gate, pulling her along behind him. “They should be around here somewhere. They won’t have gone far on their own.”
He ran the flashlight along the edge of the yard with its hedge of pittosporum. Something flashed white as he did.
Her chest clenched painfully. Please, please don’t let it be another dead one.
Joe walked toward the hedge. After a moment, he leaned down and gathered up a hen, glancing back at her as he tucked the bird under his arm. “She’s okay. Just sleepy.”
MG released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Thank god.”
She followed Joe across the yard, peering into the shadows. Another dim gray blob appeared under one of the bushes. “There’s one.” She knelt down, gathering the muttering chicken under her arm.
“Good.” Joe nodded back toward the hen house. “Put her in there, and we can close the gate. Not that I think any of them are likely to wander out again tonight. When you’ve got that one bedded down, we can see who else is out here.”
In the end, they found sixteen chickens huddled in various spots around the yard. With the two dead chickens in the henhouse, that gave her eighteen out of twenty-five. She figured she’d lost at least one more since she’d seen one chicken in the coyote’s mouth as he’d run off.
Maybe they’d find the others when it got light. She leaned against the gate, rubbing her forehead. “Robespierre’s still missing. And Hen Nine.”
“Hen Nine?” Joe raised an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t going to name them.”
“I didn’t name them. Nine’s not a name. It’s a number.”
“But you know which hen she is.”
MG shrugged. “I know what she looks like. So what?”
Joe sighed. “So nothing. She’s probably around here somewhere, but I’d suggest we wait until the sun comes up so we can see a little better. Shouldn’t be too long now at that.”
“Do you think she’s all right?” Her voice trembled slightly.
He blew out a breath. “The others were. She’s probably just better at hiding out than they were. And you need to get some rest.”
“So do you.” She sighed. “You’ve got breakfast. I’m sorry…”
He held up his hand. “Don’t. Just don’t. This isn’t even close to being something you should apologize for.”
“No, except maybe I should apologize for the open gate.”
Joe frowned. “Maybe. I’m not so sure about that.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Just doesn’t seem like something you’d do. Or me.”
“But if it wasn’t us, who was it?”
He shrugged again. “Another interesting question.”
“Okay, never mind. I’ll think about that later. Why don’t you go on back to bed?”
His brow furrowed. “What are you going to do?”
“Bury the hens. Shouldn’t take long.”
Joe stared at her, his face absolutely expressionless. “You’re going to bury the chickens.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow. I don’t want to see them when I wake up. And it might upset the others.”
He went on staring for a long moment, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. She swore to herself that if he mentioned the words “stock pot” or “garbage sack,” she’d kick him in the shins. Then he sighed, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Come on. The shovel’s probably in the shed.”
The omelets Joe cooked were a little ragged the next morning, but he figured few people in the dining room would notice. Most of them looked like they’d had a rougher night than he had and were only interested in coffee anyway. The advantage of working on Saturday morning.
Darcy came in after they’d finished the cleanup and began on what was left of the lunch prep. She cast a critical eye on Placido’s pile of onions but apparently decided they were acceptable.
After a moment, she leaned against the counter next to Joe. “Got an idea for a dessert.”
“Yeah?” He tried to work up some enthusiasm. “What is it?”
“Panna cotta. With pear-pomegranate compote. And biscotti on the side.”
He frowned. “We were talking about using pomegranate in the entrée.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Maybe mango for that after all.”
Joe gave her a slightly sour smile. “You were selling me on local.”
“Well you’re already doing the seared
fois gras
from the Hudson Valley. So what else have we got in season?”
He rubbed his chin. “Apple might work.” He pushed himself up from the counter where he’d been leaning. “Let me look around and see what occurs to me. If we’re not going local, we might as well go all the way and use apple in brown sugar on the
fois gras
. Maybe with a little maple cream on top.” He nodded, his smile broadening. “Hot damn. We got us a menu.”
“When do you want to start testing the new stuff?”
He rubbed his hands together. “This afternoon. The quail’s already here. Beets can roast during lunch. Yeah.” Except, of course, that he had to go by MG’s place to make sure she was okay. He’d given her the day off so that she could deal with the chicken emergency. “I have to take off for a half hour or so after lunch, but I can get back in time to put it all together.”
“Sure. No problem. Oh, what the hell is he doing?” She stared fixedly at Ezra, currently macerating a sea scallop as he tried to remove the muscle.
Joe sighed as Darcy marched across the kitchen. “Go to it.”
After the lunch rush was done, he dragged off his apron and his chef’s coat, pulling on a T-shirt in his office, and headed down the road to MG’s place. He wasn’t really worried for her personal safety, but she seemed fragile in other ways. Witness burying the damn chickens.
He sighed. She could tell her hens apart. She buried the chickens even though they both would have made superlative soup stock or could have been dumped in the garbage can. While he didn’t believe in judging other people’s obsessions, he’d spent enough time on working farms in his life to know that smart farmers didn’t decide chickens made great house pets.
Of course, burying the chickens didn’t mean she wanted to move them into the parlor. But he swore if she decided to put up headstones, they’d have a little talk.
MG was in the backyard with her guitar. He sat down beside her, sliding an arm around her shoulders. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. A couple more hens came back after breakfast. And I made a quick sweep around the woods close in. I didn’t see any other bodies.”
“Good.” He glanced around the yard. The chickens were clipping the grass contentedly enough. Either they didn’t notice some of their fellow birds were gone or they didn’t much care one way or the other. “Everything okay with the hens that came back?”
She shrugged. “Pretty much. Not many eggs but that could be as much about the molting as their little walk on the wild side last night.”
“Yeah.” He checked over the chickens. Some of them still looked a little seedy, but most seemed to be holding up okay. “You ever find your missing hen? The one with the number?”
“Hen Nine? Yeah.” She slid her fingers across the strings lightly as she stared across the yard.
Crap.
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“Did you put her back in the hen house?”
She blew out a breath. “No, actually.”
“Why not?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.” She put her guitar carefully back into the case, then pushed herself up.
He followed her across to the hedge at the side of the yard. She paused near the shed. “She’s there.”
“In the shed?”
She shook her head. “No. There. Under the bush.”
Joe stepped around her, staring down at the hen sitting plump and remarkably content under one of the pittosporum bushes. “She looks okay.”
“She is okay.” MG shrugged. “She’s got a couple of eggs.”
Joe checked the hen again. The bird gave him a distinctly defiant look. “You want me to carry her back to the henhouse for you?”
MG shook her head again. “I want to just leave her here. Until her chicks hatch—then we can move them all back inside the fence. I mean assuming the chicks hatch and all. I don’t know if Robespierre…” She licked her lips. “And he’s still missing.”
“I thought you didn’t want any chicks?” Joe asked hurriedly.
“Things change.” She blew out a breath. “She’s okay here, I guess, unless we get another hungry coyote or something.”
He put a hand on her shoulder, turning her so that she looked up at him. “Tell me you’re not doing this as a tribute to that freakin’ rooster.”
“No.” She licked her lips. “Well, not exactly. I mean since it looks like I don’t have a rooster anymore, it might work out. One of her chicks might be male.”
“You don’t need a rooster if you’re just doing eggs.”
“I want a rooster.” Her lower lip trembled. “I want Robespierre back.”
Joe put his arms around her, pulling her against his chest so that she wouldn’t see his gritted teeth. “Okay, okay, leave the hen out here to hatch her chicks. She’ll probably be all right. You could even let one or two of the other hens hatch out a brood if they’ve got some eggs from yesterday, assuming Robespierre left a few legacies around. That way you’d have extra chickens to pick up the slack from the ones you lost and for when your older hens stop laying.”
“Stop laying?” She stared up at him with anguished eyes.
“Skip it.” He sighed. “Let’s just leave her to her business. You can come back up to the Rose and help Darcy and me try out some recipes for this freakin’ contest.”
She nodded, nestling her head into the curve of his shoulder. “Okay, I can chop stuff up, I guess.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of having you serve as taster.” Joe moved her slowly toward the back door. “Let’s go see what we can do with some roasted beets.”
“I hate beets,” she muttered against his collarbone. “I want to taste Darcy’s dessert.”
He chuckled. “That’s my girl.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
MG stared down at the load of lettuce in the sink that she was supposedly washing. She really needed to focus. Joe had managed to get her some extra hours working Sunday brunch. The money would help, of course, but so would the distraction. Sitting around watching the chickens, and hoping that Robespierre might come wandering back, was beginning to take a toll on her disposition.
Of course, her disposition was the least of her problems. Ever since the attack on the chickens, she’d found herself feeling less and less optimistic about her ability to keep making the payments on the farm. It wasn’t that the eggs had brought in so much money. It was just that the chickens seemed like one more thing that had headed south in her life. Try as she might to be upbeat about her chances, she was beginning to feel like the loss of the chickens was the beginning of the end.
“Are you doing anything in particular?” Darcy’s voice snapped her out of her morning funk. She seemed to be experiencing a lot of morning funks lately. That was something she had to stop.
She sighed, staring down at the half-washed lettuce. “Just cleaning lettuce. Why? Aren’t you supposed to be out keeping track of the line?” She glanced toward the crowd of diners moving through the buffet. Jorge was carving a glistening ham at the end.
Darcy shrugged. “Joe’s taking care of it. Hell, Placido could probably take care of it. It’s just a buffet. We don’t even do omelets on Sundays.”
MG wiped her hands on a towel. “So what do you need?”