After a good fifteen minutes ogling a newborn calf, Helena led me out to the yard intent on showing me her favorite hens. Our conversation centered on a slumber party she'd been invited to that she was still trying to decide if she would go to because the school's mean girl, Francis, was going to be there, and she always liked to play mean pranks on the other girls while they slept. I told her I'd been to a few parties with a Francis type friend, and I always just made sure to stay awake until they fell asleep. Helena decided that was solid advice, and on our way to the chicken coop, she texted her friend, Leslie, to let her know she would come to the slumber party.
Helena pushed her phone into her pocket. "I let Leslie know that I wasn't going to put my sleeping bag anywhere near Francis."
"Probably a good idea," I said. As we walked toward the coop, I tried to devise my gentle, polite plan for breaking free from my thirteen-year-old hostess.
We reached the coop. Helena pointed her finger through the wire. "See that one with the black on her head?" There were dozens of chickens, of varying colors. Asking if I saw the one with black on her head was like asking if I saw the one with feathers. And since they moved around in a typically flustered, agitated fashion for hens who were certain their human visitors brought food, it was hard to pinpoint the exact chicken.
"Yes," I lied. "Is that your chicken?"
"Yep, that's Maui. I named her after the Hawaiian island."
"Right. Very cool."
A loud ping, like a rock hitting metal, sent the chickens running back toward their boxes.
Helena spun around on her heels. "Tyler and Sammy, you're scaring the chickens," she called, but I couldn't see her siblings. She stomped off on a mission, so I followed her.
Just past the barn and out in a section of field that was empty and covered with weeds, Tyler and Sammy were setting tin cans on a sawhorse.
"Stupid slingshot practice," Helena muttered to me. "Hey, you guys are scaring the chickens."
In true older sibling form, Tyler and Sammy completely ignored Helena's complaint. They returned to two orange cones that had been set up a good distance from the cans on the sawhorse.
Sammy withdrew a smooth pebble, like the one she'd collected on the path the day before. She positioned it in the slingshot, closed one eye and stuck her tongue out.
Helena giggled. "She always sticks her tongue out when she's concentrating. Sometimes I take pictures of her and post them on Instagram. I always get a ton of likes, and since, as she has told me many times, she has no interest in anything I post, she has never seen the pictures of her with her dumb tongue sticking out."
Sammy fired off her slingshot. The pebble flew so fast I lost track of it, but none of the cans were hit.
Sammy stomped her foot. "Darn it. Why am I so lame?"
"You keep taking your eye of the target, and you're letting your wrist snap back too much." Tyler stepped up between the cones, pulled a stone from his pocket, positioned it and let it fly. A ping was followed by a tin can flying into the air and landing with a thud in the soft weeds.
Helena burst out with a preteen laugh. "Ha, you're lame all right, Sammy. Tyler could beat you at that with a blindfold on."
Sammy reached into her pocket and swiveled her sister's direction. "You forget I'm armed," she mused.
Helena put her hands on her hips. "I'm going to tell Mom that you pointed a weapon at me. You'll be grounded for a month."
Tyler shoved the slingshot in his pocket. "You guys stand here and argue like babies, I've got to fix the gate. Dad is taking his sweet time wherever he went."
Even though Ruby hadn't been the least bit supportive when Jackson led Harold away, she'd at least kept her promise not to let the kids in on what was happening.
"Well, Helena, I've had a lovely time visiting the calf and the chickens, but I need to get back to work."
"To write the story about us?" she asked. "Will you be taking our pictures? It'll be a perfect excuse to ask Mom for a new dress."
"I'm not sure yet. I'll have to talk to the editor." I waved. "Thanks again." I headed out feeling deceptively mean. The poor kid was thinking about pictures and new dresses, but if the investigation zeroed in on Harold as the killer, her life was about to change dramatically.