“Not enough. The population’s got to be doubled,” Michael Argenti said.
The assistant wrote that down.
“Big Barney doesn’t like the birds too crowded,” said Hank.
“This isn’t a rest home for chickens,” said Michael Argenti with a nasty smile. “It’s a factory. The more units we turn out, the more money we make. At Roast Roost we get mature birds in seven weeks. You’re going to have to be that good, too.”
Michael Argenti looked around the plant again, shaking his head. Then he bent down and took a handful of grain out of one of the feeding bowls. Little chicks pecked at it in his open palm. Michael Argenti looked back at Hank. “The feed’s gotta change, too. But I’ll take care of that personally,” he said. “I’ve got something special in mind.”
By that time, the assistant had the door to the outside standing open. Michael Argenti walked through it and climbed into a stretch Mercedes limo without breaking his stride. As the car drove off Jupe read its license plate.
It said PLUCKER-1.
“Well, Michael Argenti was everything I expected him to be,” Jupe said to Pete as they drove south, heading back toward San Francisco. “A brash, arrogant, ruthless, self-important business animal.”
“Just what I was thinking,” Pete said. “But you left out the word ‘jerk.’ ”
They rode in silence for a while, but around 7:00 p.m., when they were just a few miles outside of the city, Jupe suddenly yelled at Pete, “Pull over”
“What’s wrong?” Pete asked as he steered their small rented car onto the highway off-ramp. Then Pete saw the sign. It was a tall painted chicken with a flashing neon crown, perched on the purple barn roof of a Chicken Coop restaurant. “What happened to a melon a day keeps the pounds away?” Pete asked.
“There have been a number of scientific studies lately which have hypothesized that foods rich in saturated fats may actually be beneficial to people,” Jupe said.
“That’s barn crud and you know it,” Pete said. “But so is your melon diet. So let’s eat!”
Pete parked the car and caught up with Jupe, who was not wasting a second getting into the Chicken Coop restaurant.
Jupe stopped at the doorway, inhaling deeply. “Did you know that the sense of smell is one of the weakest of the five senses?” he told Pete. “After you’ve been in a particular aroma for even a short period of time, you become dulled to it and can’t smell it anymore. That’s why it’s important to savor that first blast of grease when you walk in the door.”
“Give me a break, Jupe. People are waiting behind us to get in,” Pete said.
They walked to the order counter, where a teenage girl in a purple plaid shirt and a khaki skirt stood smiling at them. She wore a white cap that didn’t have a bill. It had a beak. According to the purple writing on her hat, her name was Carly. Carly gave them the official Big Barney greeting.
“Hi there, buddy. Hi there, friend. It’s great to have you back again,” she said. “What’s your order? What’s the scoop? We’ve got it from hen’s teeth to soup. What would you like?”
“I’ll have a six-piece murder to go,” Pete said absently.
“Excuse me?” the girl said.
“Oh — sorry,” Pete said. “Six-piece chicken.”
Then Jupe ordered a full chicken dinner and the two of them found a table by the window. But when they sat down to eat, Pete didn’t touch his food.
“You know,” Pete said, “we’re making a pretty big assumption here. I mean, what if this food — that drumstick you’re about to demolish — is the stuff that’s poisoned?”
“I haven’t forgotten and I haven’t ruled out the possibility,” Jupe said. “But there are times in a man’s life when he just has to take a risk — and this is one of them.” He bit into the drumstick and closed his eyes to savor it.
Pete shrugged his shoulders and picked at his own food.
“The key to this case is Juliet Coop and, quite possibly, her missing briefcase,” Jupe said when he had eaten a few more bites. “Unfortunately, we can’t wait for her amnesia to pass to find a solution. Our poisoner knows we’re on the case, and if he can’t scare us away, he may decide to speed up his plans. So let’s consider what MOM has to say about our three suspects.”
“My mom would say, ‘Don’t get into any more trouble, Pete. You’ve given me enough gray hairs already,’ ” Pete said.
“Not that kind of mom,” Jupe said. “I was referring to that classic formula for all detection: Motive, Opportunity, and Means. Now, as for Big Barney, he certainly has the means and the opportunity to poison his food. He could introduce something into the birds’ diet or inject the birds during processing.”
Pete looked down at the chicken in his hand and dropped it onto his tray.
“But what is Big Barney’s motive?” Jupe went on.
“He’s nuts,” Pete said.
“Is he nuts enough to kill millions of people and injure his own daughter?” Jupe asked.
“I don’t know,” Pete replied. “But who else would send you a chicken with its head cut off?”
“Anybody can buy a chicken. And we can’t forget that Michael Argenti is in the chicken business too,” Jupe said. “There is a man with an irrefutable motive. I’d say he’s determined to either take over Big Barney’s business — or ruin it. If the takeover deal goes through, fine. But if it doesn’t succeed, maybe he’s planning to poison Big Barney’s chickens as some sort of revenge. Maybe his visit to Petaluma today was really a matter of casing the joint to figure out how to poison the feed. That would cover means. And as for opportunity, it seems like anyone has access to Big Barney’s ranches. After all, we walked right in, no questions asked.”
“Okay, how about suspect number three?” said Pete.
“Mr. Sweetness? Your guess is as good as mine. He’s fronting for someone — but who?”
They pondered the suspects as they dumped their trash in a chicken’s mouth garbage can and then headed for the car.
It was dark outside as Jupe and Pete drove into San Francisco. The famous San Francisco fog had already begun to roll in. It hovered like a doughnut around the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, so that the guys could see the tops of the towers and the traffic underneath, but nothing in between.
San Francisco’s seven hills were similarly draped in patches of fog, which left the peaks and valleys clear but clouded up the midsections. Pete thought it was awesome and Jupe tried to analyze the meteorological elements that produced fog every night in the middle of summer.
Then they checked out all of San Francisco’s rock radio stations, spinning the dial, listening for a cut by the Stone Bananas, one of Sax’s new groups. When they were only ten or fifteen miles from the airport, however, Pete began to get nervous. He kept glancing in the rear-view mirror and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Take a look behind us, Jupe,” he said. “See a purple Cavalier?”
“I see it,” Jupe said. “What about it?”
“I think he’s following us,” Pete said.
Logic said no. No one knew they had come to San Francisco. It was such a spur of the moment trip. But Pete said yes so strongly. “Okay. Slow down,” Jupe said. “We’ll take a look.”
Pete slowed a little more and the purple car moved up on them, switching to the right lane. Now it was almost even with their back right bumper. Jupe turned to look, but the headlight’s bright beam prevented him from seeing the driver’s face. Jupe rolled down his window. The driver in the purple car rolled down his window and pulled up a little more. Now he and Jupe were side by side, face to face.
Jupe gasped and jerked back away from the window. It was Mr. Sweetness! He was wearing the army camouflage jacket, his arms bulging in the sleeves. His face was somewhat pockmarked and he held his mouth in a frozen half smile, half sneer. Jupe knew immediately that he was staring into the cold eyes of a killer.
“Let’s get out of here!” Jupe shouted.
Pete took his eyes off the road long enough to see exactly what Jupe was shouting about. Mr. Sweetness laughed and suddenly the purple car swerved at them. But Pete stepped on the gas and their rental car jerked ahead.
“He’s not just following us. He’s trying to smear us across the road,” Pete said, taking a quick glance at his mirror.
Mr. Sweetness pulled back into Pete’s lane and stayed directly behind him. Every time Pete slowed down for traffic, the purple Cavalier lunged forward and hit them. Ram! Hard enough to dent the bumper but not hard enough to mash body metal. Ram!
“Take an exit,” Jupe said. “We’ll lose him!”
Pete pulled off the highway quickly, but so did the Cavalier. No matter how fast Pete drove, the Cavalier was always able to keep up. Ram! There didn’t seem to be any choice but to keep on driving. but for how long? Ram!
Both guys realized that being so far away from Rocky Beach had made them feel safe. The idea that no matter where they went, Mr. Sweetness would be there too, had never occurred to them. Now they were racing that reality. alone. in the dark. Ram!
When they reached a remote hillside residential area, Pete turned sharply and aimed the car up a hill. Ram! A sign indicated that they were taking a scenic route up to one of San Francisco’s most famous tourist attractions — Twin Peaks. From the tops of these two mountains, sightseers had a panoramic view of the water, the city lights, and the entire Bay Area.
But as the road curved upward, Pete found that they were driving right into the doughnut of fog ringing the mountains. Ram!
“I’ve never seen fog like this,” Pete said desperately, slowing the car. In fact, it was so thick that they couldn’t see more than a foot in front of their headlights. Ram! For a moment, Pete thought about turning around and going back down the mountain. But there wasn’t room — and they knew Mr. Sweetness wouldn’t allow it. Ram!
Jupe looked nervously out the back. He couldn’t see the Cavalier at all. He couldn’t even see another set of headlights. But he felt it each time Mr. Sweetness rammed into them.
Then, for what seemed like many minutes, nothing happened.
“Do you think he stopped?” Pete asked Jupe in a tense, thin voice.
“I don’t know,” Jupe answered. “I can’t see a thing. Just keep driving.”
Pete gripped the wheel even tighter. They were coming to a curve in the road, and Pete didn’t want his concentration to break. It was almost impossible to see the road right in front of the car, let alone the edge where the ground dropped away sharply.
Suddenly, just as Pete was nearing the sharpest part in the curve, the purple Cavalier appeared out of nowhere, driving on the left side of the two-lane road. He was swerving from side to side, trying to push Pete and Jupe over the edge!
“Watch out! We’re going over!” Jupe shouted.
Pete pulled the wheel to the left, tires squealed, and they felt the car jerk back onto the pavement from the shoulder. Then Pete held his breath and sped forward blindly. No matter how terrifying it was to drive in this fog, it was better than sticking around for another encounter with Mr. Sweetness.
At the top of the hill the fog disappeared. They had driven high enough to be above it.
With his heart pounding, Pete backed into one of the parking spaces in the curved parking lot overlooking the magnificent vista below. His hands shook as he wiped his forehead.
“Now let’s just wait for Mr. Sweetness to show up,” Pete said in a furious, let’s-get-tough tone of voice.
Pete and Jupe sat silently on top of Twin Peaks with the motor running. They were waiting for the purple Cavalier with Mr. Sweetness in it to burst through the fog to the top of the hill. Now that they were out of the fog themselves, and surrounded by a few dozen sightseers who could back them up, Pete felt less frightened and a whole lot more angry. In fact, he was burning mad.
“The guy’s got a lot of nerve,” Pete said, hitting his fist repeatedly on the steering wheel. “I’d like to meet him in a fair fight, I’ll tell you that.” Pete mentally ran through all the karate moves he knew and would use on Mr. Sweetness if he got the chance. “Why doesn’t he show up? What’s he doing on that road, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Jupe said thoughtfully. “There are a lot of possibilities. ”
They waited about thirty minutes and still the Cavalier didn’t show up.
Suddenly Jupe slammed his fist into the dashboard. “We’ve got to get to the airport,” he said.
“But what about Mr. Sweetness?” Pete said.
“He’s not coming,” Jupe said. “He probably turned around and went back down the hill.”
Pete slapped the steering wheel with his palms and put the car in gear.
“Look on the bright side,” Jupe said. “Now at least we know exactly what he looks like.”
Pete drove quickly to the airport and pulled into the Rental Car Returns area. They left the keys in the car, as instructed, and then rushed into the rental office to pay. But just before they got to the office, Pete spun Jupe around by the arm.
“Look!” he said, pointing to a returned car parked near the front.
“A purple Cavalier!” Jupe exclaimed. “But is it the one we’re looking for?”
They walked over and circled the empty car.
“It’s the right license plate,” said Jupe. “Quick! Go into the office and see if he’s still in there, and stall him. If he’s not there, try to find out from the clerks what Mr. Sweetness’s real name is. I’ll be there to help you in a minute.”
As Pete left, Jupe opened the purple car’s passenger door and leaned inside. Was there something in the car that might be a clue? Jupe started searching, meticulously checking the carpeting behind, under, and in front of the seats. He checked the ashtrays and the glove compartment, and even squeezed his hand into the narrow space between the pedals to check under the floor mats. Then he stood up, puffing a little from being bent over for so long.
But it had been worth it. He had found something, something crucial. It didn’t tell him who Mr. Sweetness was. But it told him the next best thing — where he might go to find out. Jupe rushed to the rental office and met Pete coming out.
“What did the clerk say?” asked Jupe.
“Have a nice day,” Pete said.
“About the purple car,” Jupe said impatiently.
“Have a nice day,” Pete repeated. “That’s all it says. It’s a computer.”
“Look what I found,” Jupe said, pulling out a small crumpled piece of paper, shiny foil on one side and plain white on the other.
