Dead in Hog Heaven (A Thea Barlow Wyoming Mystery, Book Three)

By Carol Caverly

"...features plenty of action, a bold plot, and weird characters—including one mean pet chicken." ~Library Journal

Thea Barlow has quit her Chicago job and returned to Wyoming—with her fiancé Max Holman—to work as a freelance writer.

In Hog Heaven to investigate the ruins of an old rural brothel, Thea stumbles upon a woman's body and is fingered for the murder.

Now, Thea and Max must ferret out Hog Heaven's secrets and expose the person attempting to frame Thea before she and Max become the next victims...if the town's mean-spirited chicken doesn't get them first.

"Fast-paced action and snappy dialog." ~Publisher's Weekly

THE THEA BARLOW WYOMING MYSTERIES, in order
All the Old Lions
Frogskin and Muttonfat
Dead in Hog Heaven
Death by Doodlebug

• Language: English
• Publisher: ePublishing Works
• Release date: Oct 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781614177340

Carol Caverly

Raised in a Chicago suburb, author Carol Caverly married into a Wyoming pioneer ranch family. Yes, it was a bit of a culture shock, but she quickly grew to love the stark dry landscape and, most of all, the people. Now Carol enjoys writing mysteries set in the modern New Wild West she loves. www.carolcaverly.com

Book preview

One

T his here is New Sedona, the man said proudly from his perch on the rickety paint-spattered ladder. He wielded his brush carefully within the blocked-out letters across the front of the weathered building, finishing the A and putting the first daub of slick black paint in the top corner of the N.

I’m starting at the end, he explained, wiping sweat from his bulbous nose with the back of his hand, case I change my mind. The Missus thought it should be ‘little’. Little Sedona. But I’m sick of little; I like the ring of New. How about you little lady, what do you think?

I grinned and raised my hands helplessly. For all I knew his Missus was a two-hundred-pound behemoth who could make mincemeat out of me. On the other hand, I too liked the ring of new. New beginnings; I was on one myself and looking forward to all the excesses the redundancy implied.

I vote for New, I declared recklessly, leaning against my car’s fender.

Good, ‘cause that’s what it’s gonna be anyhow. He balanced the brush carefully on the paint can and began to descend the ladder, peering cautiously around his big belly. Now, what can I do for you, young lady?

I need some gas, I said, eyeing the two ancient pumps in front of the bedraggled store/cum gas station/cum post office. Do those things work or are they just for show?

You bet they work. His big smile revealed two missing teeth on the right side. He wiped his hands on a rag that hung from the side of his overalls, and finished them off with a swipe across his undershirt. Then he repeated the process after removing his tattered straw cowboy hat to wipe the sweat off his forehead and smooth back sparse gray hair.

Clyde Bodie here, he said, replacing the hat and holding out a huge hand.

Thea Barlow, I answered, shaking his arthritically gnarled fingers.

These babies are a gold mine. He patted one of the metal pumps with its old-fashioned glass tank top. Guy came by two weeks ago offered me a thousand bucks apiece, but I says, ‘No sir,’ these gas pumps are my main attraction.

I had to laugh, surely it would take more than a couple of antique gas pumps to attract anyone to this lonely place. Even for Wyoming this was a desolate piece of nowhere. I’d driven close to two hours after leaving the main highway and had seen nothing more than a couple of long-haul trucks, three pickups, and a smattering of cows and antelope. I didn’t think a name change would make much difference, though some might think New Sedona an improvement over the old one. I kind of preferred the original name, still faintly visible under the scraped paint and new lettering: Hog Heaven. The place I’d come looking for.

You can laugh if you like, young lady, he said, waggling a finger at me, but you’ll see, folks’ll be high-tailing it out here like a herd of hungry heifers. You ever been to the real Sedona in Arizona?

No, I said, but I’ve seen pictures, and know a lot of people who have been there. All of them, if I remembered correctly, had been as overcome by the beauty of the place as they were disappointed with a pervasive commercialism promoting everything from psychic enhancements to drive-through aromatherapy. The place was fast becoming a New Age tourist trap.

I thought this little post office town, population, what?—six to eight, maybe?—had an unlikely probability of becoming a tourist trap. I could see a nicely kept double-wide trailer home surrounded by a yard full of hand-made whirligigs, wishing wells, windmills and bird feeders made from plastic bottles, its occupant—the Missus, perhaps—obviously into crafts. Two other trailers were parked nearby. One could have been occupied, but the other seemed abandoned. The chances of this turning into a new Sedona were slim to none, but who was I to dampen the gleam in Clyde Bodie’s eye? I plunked some coins into a scarred pop machine that leaned beside the store’s front door and pulled out an icy root beer.

Clyde was still talking. Me and the Missus was in Sedona a few years back, and let me tell you, that’s some pretty place. Trees everywhere, hills and canyons as red as blood. Makes your head go all funny just looking at it.

He grabbed a handle on the side of the gas tank and began to pump. We watched the gas rise in the glass cylinder on top of the pump, grinning at each other like a couple of idiots. He was right. His antique babies were much more fun than today’s computerized pumps. At least his didn’t tell you to have a nice day.

He rattled on, obviously delighted to have someone to talk to. This place here is full of the same weird magnetic forces they got in Sedona. Makes for some strange happenens. He gestured at the bleak, dry land that surrounded his cluster of shabby buildings. Yep, it’s just like them Sedona hills.

My look of incredulity must have been thinly veiled.

Now lookie here, he said, removing the nozzle from my car and hanging it back on the pump. He guided me several feet away so we could get a clear view beyond the ad-plastered mechanic’s garage that sat next to the store. See that? He pointed at a long, pale butte at least a mile distant that rose with an impressive starkness from the sagebrush-studded flatland beneath. That there’s a sleeping dragon, he said, then added wisely, to them that knows about such things. And see the mountains how they rise up there behind? You can’t get more lucky than that. Has to do with the lay of the land. Called feng shui, it is. Monks and priests claim formations like that make for sacred land.

Yeah, right, I thought. The mountains weren’t really mountains, but a cluster of ridges and rocky, conical hills—granted, very large hills—that formed a protective barrier behind the lower end of the butte.

He shook his head in wonder. There’s even a creek running all along through there. All the forces of nature, you see, joined together. Mystical, I tell you. Real mystical.

There was also a road. I could see a vehicle of some kind snaking a sinuous path along the base of the butte, criss-crossing the creek in several places. It looked like an angry, low-flying hornet, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Thumbs hooked in his overall suspenders, Clyde Bodie surveyed the view with pride and satisfaction. Yep, we’re going to have our own Harmonic Convention and everything.

I glanced at him to see if he was serious. He was. "You can’t just have a harmonic convergence, can you? Isn’t it a planetary thing, happens only once every hundred years, or something like that?"

He shrugged. Hell, them California fruitcakes don’t care. You’ll see, they’ll come swarming in here shaking their beads and waving their crystals. I’m gonna put an RV park over there in the pasture.

I gazed back out at the sleeping dragon. I had to admit there was a certain majesty to the butte, its guardian hills and the feathery tracing of brush, shrub and willows that marked the course of the creek bed, but mystical? Give me a break. I guzzled the last of the root beer.

Clyde squinted, shielding his eyes to see better, as he caught sight of the approaching vehicle and its contrail of dust. He started, turned abruptly, and lumbered back to my car. ‘Course there ain’t no water in the creek, he said, grabbing the nozzle to finish filling my gas tank. We gotta fix that, too.

The prospect seemed to take all the steam out of him. I took advantage of his sudden silence to ask, "What’s going to happen to Hog Heaven? I mean, this is the site of the old Four Mile hog ranch, isn’t it?"

He looked up in surprise. You know about hog ranches?

A bit. I’ve been doing some research. I had earned a reputation of sorts for writing about old Wyoming whorehouses and the hog ranches seemed like the next step up—or down as the case might be. The so-called hog ranches, nefarious rural enterprises, had been the end of the line for prostitutes too old, sick or unsavory to work anywhere else. Just the kind of little-known western history my magazine liked to feature.

Uh, I thought, I’d said it again. My magazine. Western True Adventures wasn’t my magazine anymore. The thought that I’d actually quit my job as editor, put my furniture in storage, and bade farewell to high-rise living in Chicago to move to Wyoming for good still gave me an occasional flutter of apprehension. The article I planned to do on Wyoming hog ranches, the first effort of my new freelance writing career, sometimes felt like a pretty tenuous hold on independence.

Clyde’s grunt of disbelief brought me back to the here and now. Nobody—not even in Wyoming—knows much about hog ranches, he said, or cares two hoots. I never made a dammed nickel offa folks wantin’ to see the old Four Mile.

It’s still here, isn’t it? None of the dilapidated out-buildings I could see looked like the remains of something very old. You didn’t tear it down, did you?

Nah, the Missus wouldn’t let me. It’s over there. He pointed to a clump of scraggly trees half hidden by a slight rise of the land. By them old cottonwoods.

About a hundred yards distant, I guessed. I’d really like to see it. It must have a lot of historical value, if nothing else.

He snorted his contempt for anything that didn’t earn its keep, his friendliness turning sour. Peering over his shoulder now and then, he swiped at the car’s windows with a wet rag. Finally, he threw the rag on the ground and walked away from the pump area to check on the approaching vehicle’s progress.

I looked, too. It appeared to be a pickup and was rocketing toward us at high speed, though still minutes away. Someone you know? I asked.

Bound to be Ronnie Mae, he said glumly, more to himself than to me. That’ll be fourteen dollars.

I got my purse from the front seat and handed him some bills. He fumbled in his pocket for change and I asked, Is it okay if I go look at it?

What? He struggled to pull his thoughts back from wherever they’d gone. Look at what?

The hog ranch. The old Four Mile.

He looked over his shoulder again. The whining roar of the pickup’s engine was audible now. He obviously wanted me out of there.

Perverseness seized me—a character flaw I’m sure—but I didn’t fight it. What’s your theory about how the name ‘hog ranches’ came to be? I asked sweetly. When he remained silent I prodded him with, I know some historians claim it came from the early days when men—the Clyde Bodies of the time?—set up camp close to the forts and raised hogs to sell to the military. The hogs, of course, were quickly dumped for liquor and women, but the theory seemed sound.

Clyde Bodie bounced impatiently from one foot to the other and tried to inch his way to the store. Never heard of that one before. The women serving them ranches was hogs and the places nothing but pigsties.

I’d read that also, and it seemed to be the theory of choice, especially among the old-timers.

I don’t want to be a bother, I said. I can explore by myself, if that’s all right with you?

But our time had run out. The pickup squealed around from behind the store and skidded to a stop with a spray of dirt and pebbles. The door flew open and a woman jumped out. Thirty, maybe. Tall, shapely, and mad as hell. Her long blond hair was tied back with a scarf, and her face so contorted with anger that it was hard to tell if she was pretty or not.

There’s a dammed geologist nosing around the land out there, Bodie, she said. Did you give him permission? She strode to the store, pushing Clyde out of her way.

Geologist? My heart sank. Max. Don’t be stupid, I told myself, surely Max wasn’t the only geologist around here. And besides, he was supposed to be waiting for me in Rock Springs.

The girl stopped in the doorway and turned to shake her fist at Clyde before she disappeared inside. If you did, old man, she spat out at him, I’ll have your hide.

She reappeared almost instantly with a shotgun cocked open over her arm.

Now Ronnie Mae… Clyde whined.

But, of course, Ronnie Mae paid no attention to him. She just rammed a shell in the shotgun’s barrel, snapped it closed, and shoved two more shells in her jeans pocket.

I felt like I was in a bad remake of a Western movie. I suppose that’s why I spoke. Clyde raised a hand as if to stop me, but the words got out anyway. That geologist wouldn’t be Max Holman, would it?

She barely glanced at me, just stalked past and got back in the truck.

Whoever he is, he’s going to be full of holes. She slammed the door for emphasis and drove off, leaving Clyde and me standing in another shower of dirt and stones.

Two

The speedometer crept past eighty as I let my Camry eat up the highway miles. Reason, common sense, and the laws of coincidence told me Max couldn’t be the geologist that crazy woman was gunning for. Still, the determination on Ronnie Mae’s face filled me with apprehension that wouldn’t be satisfied until I actually saw Max in flesh and blood.

Oh no, I thought, not blood. Please. My two other forays into Wyoming in search of material for the magazine had gotten me—and consequently Max—involved in more violence than I’d found during a lifetime in Chicago. No wonder I was skittish, but surely the laws of coincidence, or probability, were on my side now.

Or was there some kind of negative synergy between Max and me that attracted misfortune? Bad karma? Vibes? Voodoo? Good grief, I sounded like Clyde Bodie with all his talk of strange magnetic forces. There wasn’t anything mystical about the deaths that dogged my path in Wyoming. Searching for stories had simply placed me among people and situations that were headed for disaster before I got there. I wasn’t the catalyst. It wasn’t me.

But here I was on my first stop back in the state, only twenty miles from my new home base in Garnet Pass, and I’d already confronted a wild woman with a shotgun. This was not reassuring.

The speedometer crept higher. Rock Springs was at least an hour beyond Garnet Pass. I had allowed plenty of time to stop at Hog Heaven, then Garnet Pass. I wanted to sneak a peek at the house I’d rented, sight unseen, before going on to Rock Springs to meet Max, who was attending a business meeting there. So much for plans. Now, all I wanted was to find Max. Everything else could wait until later.

I wondered if I should report Ronnie Mae to the sheriff. I might just be laughed out of town if I did. Chasing trespassers off your land—even with a shotgun—wasn’t a biggie in these parts. Without much effort, I decided that any reporting I might want to do could wait until later. I was hell-bent for Rock Springs.

I didn’t ease up on the gas until I saw another vehicle coming toward me, the first since leaving Hog Heaven. It wasn’t the Highway Patrol, but one of those monster pickup trucks. I raised my hand in greeting as we passed, a custom I’d found quaint on my first trip to Wyoming, but now recognized as a heartfelt acknowledgment that one wasn’t the only person left alive in the world after all.

The sound of squealing brakes brought my eyes to the rearview mirror. The truck had turned in the road and shot back toward me. My Chicago caution plugged in; I stomped on the gas. There were two sides to aloneness in the middle of nowhere, one of them very scary.

The pickup gained on me, horn blaring, and through the mirror I saw the driver waving an arm wildly out his window. I slowed a bit, but hit the door lock and fumbled to get my cell phone from the glove compartment. A little bit of on-the-road comfort.

Still honking, the truck pulled alongside the Camry, but I wasn’t about to stop. Squinting through the sun’s glare, I couldn’t get a good look at the driver until he rolled down the passenger window and threw off a dark Stetson. Max? I braked, slowing to a crawl.

Max? I yelled, rolling down my window. What are you doing here?

Thea… The rest of his words were lost on the wind. I eased to the side of the road, stopped, and the truck pulled up behind me. We both jumped out.

He wrapped his arms around me. Who in hell did you think I was? I thought you’d never stop.

A girl can’t be too careful, I said lightly, filled with relief at the sight, sound and feel of him. His kiss tasted wonderfully of heat, salt, and dust. I leaned back to get a good look at him. It had been four months since we’d last seen each other. He looked great. Tall, sun-browned and darkly handsome, if you leaned toward five o’clock shadows and crooked noses. His black hair was dampened with sweat and matted to his forehead from his hat, tendrils clinging to the white strip of skin across his forehead where the sun didn’t reach. I smiled, my heart filled with warmth for this gritty Wyoming Max, who bore little resemblance to the sleek, well-dressed oilman/geologist who occasionally left the wilds to visit me in Chicago.

We’d met on my first Wyoming venture when I’d mistaken him for a scheming hired hand. Since then we’d done our best to keep the fires lit in a long-distance relationship. It hadn’t always been easy.

I thought you were going to check out Hog Heaven, he said.

I did. Kind of. I just didn’t stay very long. And what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Rock Springs? I thought you had an important meeting there?

Something came up.

A gleam sparkled in his eyes and his face was alive with animation. Joy at seeing me? That might be part of it, I thought, but there was something else there as well. His skin fairly leapt with restless energy. Excitement seemed to ooze from his pores.

What’s going on, Max?

You, my dear. He picked me up in a big bear hug and swung me around. I’m so glad to see you. I thought you’d never get here.

Well, I’m here, I said, still suspicious. Frisky was not a word anyone would use to describe Max Holman. What was going on? I kissed him lightly and stepped away. At least I’m glad to see you’re not full of holes.

Holes? What do you mean?

Do you know someone named Ronnie Mae?

Lorenzo? There was a note of wary caution in his voice.

I don’t know her last name, but she’s tall, blond and extremely angry. I told him about what I’d seen at Hog Heaven.

To my surprise, Max threw his head back in a great burst of laughter. If I thought he’d radiated excitement before, he fairly danced with it now, his lazy-lidded eyes sparkling with the fire of what? Delight? Mischief? Devilment? Or was it something darker, more dangerous?

Yeah, I know Ronnie Mae. She’s Bodie’s niece, or rather Clyde’s wife Opal’s niece. He threw a heavy arm across my shoulders, and smiled at me indulgently. And you figured she was after me?

The thought occurred to me. And the shotgun was very real.

With another hoot of laughter he planted a big smacking kiss on my mouth. Come on, he said, dismissing the threat of Ronnie Mae as if it didn’t exist. He walked me back to my car and opened the door. Let’s get out of here. We can talk later. Big things are happening in Garnet Pass and you don’t want to miss the excitement.

Like what?

A town meeting. He faked a wry drawl. We got us a new-age range war brewing. Craziest stuff you ever heard of. Right up your alley, and if we hurry we can catch the tail end of the meeting.

Who’s fighting whom?

He brought the drawl back into play. It’s the black powder bunch agin’ the incense burners. Muskets at two. He urged me into my car.

I laughed. Can I guess that Clyde Bodie has something to do with this?

You certainly can. But New Sedona is only part of the fray.

What do they—

Later. He closed my car door. Follow me.

I did, my mind a-buzz with the prospect of more article ideas. There’s nothing like a good, contentious small-town feud to produce fodder for newspapers. Fertilized with humor, I could end up with some butt-kickin’ feed, I thought, inordinately pleased with my country analogy. Getting right in the swing of things, old girl.

I hadn’t, however, forgotten the shotgun-toting woman. If Max thought he’d diverted my attention away from her he was sadly mistaken. His evasion of my question had been slick, but not quite slick enough. My antennae were up and waving.

We passed a sign announcing a business fair to be held this weekend in Garnet Pass, and another for the Mountain Man Rendezvous, also this coming weekend. Behind the smaller signs loomed an enormous, brightly-colored billboard that proclaimed, Garnet Pass, Gem of the West, Population 2,600 and Growing! The growing was in huge, flaming bright letters. I loved it.

Making the big decision to become a freelance writer and move permanently to Wyoming had been a piece of cake compared to deciding what town I actually wanted to settle in. I was looking for a small town, but one with energy, and not so set in its ways that all newcomers were regarded with suspicion.

I didn’t want to choose wherever it was that Max was currently staying, as he never settled anywhere for long. I felt I needed to be independent and establish my own Wyoming existence while we decided if marriage was really the step we wanted to take. Caution is my middle name, sad to say.

But in the end I succumbed to Max’s campaign for Garnet Pass. His tales about the town’s new mayor, who was reviving a dying town with not much more than boundless enthusiasm and a good head for business, had caught my imagination, and so here I was.

I rubber-necked as much as possible as we drove up Main Street—what else?—headed for an imposing hewn-rock building at the end of the street. The City Hall.

People were everywhere. Families lounged around on the lawn in front of the building while their kids raced back and forth between the coolers, picnic baskets, and the park next door. People dressed in the old-time garb of mountain men, cavalry soldiers, and pioneers mingled with everyone else gathered on the long cement stairs. Others leaned against or sat on car and truck fenders. The building’s wide double doors were propped open in the heat. It looked more like a festival than a town meeting.

I followed Max into a parking lot filled with dust-coated cars and trucks. We squeezed our vehicles into a back corner next to a couple of horses tied to a neighboring fence, and hurried off to join the fun, dodging kids on Rollerblades and skateboards.

Hey, Max, a man said, working a toothpick around his