"There ain't no way you know anything about this here situation! Go away!" The little feller tried his best to disappear under the steering wheel.
"Oh, but maybe I do," said Holmes. "You're trying to find a wild turkey, sold by Mrs. Maybell Buckshott of Brixton Bayou to your buddy Breckenridge over there. He turned around and sold it to the Windigate Bar and Gun Club, who then handed it off to a feller called Hank Baker."
It's always fun to watch little whiney men get all shook up when Holmes starts explainin' things. The stranger climbed slowly out of the old Dodge, and stood there, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. "How the hell do you know that? You don't know how bad I need to find that turkey!"
"Well, then. I reckon we need to go on back to my office and discuss this over a cold beer, like civilized folk do," he said. "What's your name?"
"Um…" stammered the little man, "My name is Johnny Robertson." He looked down at his feet.
"No, no, your real name," Holmes said, all sweet and innocent-like. "I won't talk turkey to a man with a made-up name."
The man blushed brighter than a 60-watt bulb. "Oh… in that case, everyone calls me 'Red.' Jimmy 'Red' Ryder."
"Of course! Bellman and third-shift fry cook down at the Blue Bird. Here's my address. Follow our Buick and we'll get this all sorted out in no time."
The little goober followed close behind us for the half-hour drive back to the trailer park. His truck shook as bad as he did, and a couple of times we thought he was gonna chicken out and swerve off into the swamp. When we arrived at Space 221B, Ryder all but fell out of the Dodge, shaking even harder than before.
"Come on in," Holmes sorta sang, real cheerful like, as we stepped into the living room. "You look damn cold, Ryder. Have a seat over there by the space heater while Bubba gets us a couple of beers."
I cracked open the cans and plopped myself down on the settee to watch the show.
"So," said Holmes, taking a long, deliberate sip of his beer. "You want to know about them turkeys?"
"Uh-huh."
"Or, more likely, just one wild turkey. A big ol' fat one with an extra toe."
Ryder started shakin' again, and downed his beer in one shuddering gulp. "Lord have mercy!" he cried, "do you know what happened to it?"
"It came here."
"H-here?"
"Yep, and it was the strangest thing. I ain't a bit surprised that you liked that particular bird. After all, it had somethin' extra in its giblets. The brightest, sparkliest, most amazin' little blue giblet that you'll ever want to see. I have it here in my giblet museum."
Our visitor staggered to his feet as Holmes dug around in the Folger's can for the Blue Garfunkel. He held up the stone, which sparkled like nobody's business and smelled like decaf, too. Ryder just stood there, his face all scrunched up in pain, not knowin' whether to grab it and run, or ask us why we called it Garfunkel when it looked like Elvis.
"We got you dead to rights, Ryder," Holmes whispered. He could be a real melodramatic pain in the butt sometimes. Ryder backed into the corner like a scared rabbit, nearly knocking over the space heater. "Geez, be careful, you shiverin' sack of tapioca. You wouldn't last five minutes in the county jail. Help the little weenie back to his seat, Bubba, and get him another beer."
Ryder had just about passed out, but the beer steadied him. He sat like a Toyota at fast idle, staring at Holmes.
"I got most of the details sorted out, certainly enough to throw your sorry butt in jail for as long as you'll be able to remember. You knew all about Tammy Faye's little blue beauty here, didn't you, Ryder?"
"It was Katie Kurriak who told me about it," he whimpered, almost in tears.
"I see! Tammy Faye's backup singer and accordion player! Looking for her own career-launchin' opportunity, was she? And using you to get there. It's a sad old story, Ryder, that's turned you into a cold-blooded thief. You knew that poor Horner had a record and it would be real easy to pin all this on him. So what'd you do? Offer to put some of those little fancy soaps in the bathroom of the pink Pace Arrow? And then tell Horner that the RV needed to be vacuumed, so you could have him arrested? And then —"
Ryder dropped to his knees and started crying like a baby with a load in its diaper. "For God's sake, Mr. Holmes! Don't say nothin'!" Man, he was wailin' and carryin' on somethin' awful. It was embarrassing. "It'd break my mama's heart! I won't never do nothin' wrong, never again! Oh, puh-leeeeeeeze don't call the cops! For the love of Christ, don't!"
"Geez, man, get off the floor and back into the chair! Sure, you beg and whine now that you're caught, but you didn't think twice about it when that poor kid was locked up for somethin' he didn't know anything about."
"I'll leave the county, Mr. Holmes! I will, I swear! You've got the stone. There won't be anything against Horner and they'll have to let him go."
"We'll think on that. But for now, why don't you come clean and tell us the rest of what happened. How did the stone end up in the the turkey giblets, and how did the turkey end up in Mr. Baker's hands? Don't lie, unless you want to be a bird yourself — a jailbird."
Ryder was shakin' so hard the TV changed channels. "I'll tell you the whole story, just the way it happened," he sniveled. "When Horner was arrested, I figured I'd get the Garfunkel outta town right away, since I didn't know what the sheriff was likely to do next, having missed Bassmasters and all. He might even start thinkin' I was involved and wanna search my stuff and all. I figured nobody would thank anything of me going to visit Maybell Buckshott, my sister who lives out on Brixton Bayou. she's in the turkey business, raisin' up gobblers just like they was wild.
"On the way out there I just knew I was gonna get pulled over for some damn thing or another, and they'd find Elvis in my pocket. By the time I got to Maybell's place, sweat was pourin' off my face. She asked what was wrong, any why was I so sickly lookin'. I told her that I was shaken up by the robbery at the Blue Bird, but I'd be okay. I went out back to visit the outhouse and think about what I was gonna do.
"While I stood there, worryin' and wonderin', one of the butt-ugliest turkeys I'd ever seen wandered up and gobbled at me. It was like he was sayin' 'well, get on with it or this story won't ever get over.' And suddenly I got the idea in my head. I knew exactly what to do with the stone to keep myself outta jail.
"My sister had promised me a turkey in time for Thanksgiving dinner, and told me to pick out the one I wanted. I figured I go ahead and take it now, and let the bird carry the Garfunkel for me. So, I chased the birds around behind the grain shed; I picked out a big, broad-breasted one that had an extra toe. Once I caught it, I opened its beak and shoved the Garfunkel down its gullet as far as my fingers could reach. The bird had no choice but to swallow, and I felt Elvis move on down its throat. But the damned thing pecked the crap outta my hand and got away. My sister came out to see what the commotion was all about, and the bird ran off with the others.
"She looked at me kinda strange. 'What on earth was you doin' to that poor bird, Red?' she asked.
"I says, 'You told me I could have one for Thanksgiving, and I was just checkin' 'em out.'
"She says, 'By stickin' your finger in its mouth? What was you doin', checkin' for stuffing?'
"I says, 'Give me a break, willya? You know I'm particular about my birds.'
"She says, 'Yeah, whatever. Which one ya want?'
"I says, 'I want that big one in the middle. The one with the extra toe.'
"She says, 'Fine by me. Kill it and take it on home with you.'
"So I did. When I got it home, I plucked it and dressed it out, and just about fainted dead away. There was all kinds of stuff inside that bird, but no Blue Garfunkel. I couldn't find the stone anywhere, and I knew right away that something had gone bad wrong. I drove straight back to my sister's place and ran to the back yard. All the turkeys were gone!
"I says, 'Where's the birds, Maybell?'
"She says, 'Gone, Red.'
"I says, 'Where?'
"She says, "Breckenridge. Over to the Farmer's Market.'
"I says, 'Oh.' Then I says, "Did you have another one with an extra toe? Like the one I took with me?'
"'As a matter of fact, I did,' she tells me. 'They was like twins. Never could tell 'em apart.'
"Of course, by then I knew my goose was cooked, so to speak, and I drove off to the Farmer's Market as fast as the old Dodge would go. But, my luck runnin' true to form, I found out that Breckenridge had done sold the turkeys right away, and he wouldn't tell me where they were. So now my sister thinks I'm nuts — maybe I am, at that, and I'm gonna go to jail for stealing a jewel that I couldn't even hold on to long enough to cash in. God, I'm such a loser!"
He started bawlin' again. What a loser.
It was quiet for a spell, except for Ryder's whimperin' and the tapping of Holmes's fingers on the wall. Finally, my buddy stood up and threw open the front door.
"Get out," he said.
"What? Really?"
"Shut up and get goin'!"
Nothing else needed to be said. Ryder was up and out the door like a shot. The old Dodge fired to life and all we heard was the sound of screechin' tires fading into the distance.
"Don't look at me like that, Bubba," said Holmes, reaching into the Tony Lama for his pouch of Redman. "I don't work for the sheriff and it ain't my job to keep him from lookin' like a dumbass. Now, if Horner was gonna be convicted of something, that'd be different. But since Ryder there won't be around to testify against him there won't be a case at all. So the way I figure, I'm lettin' a felon go, or I'm lettin' a feller save his soul. That little whiner won't ever do anything wrong again. Hell, he won't even cheat on his taxes. Send him to jail, and he'll be be a criminal for life. Besides, it's huntin' season. Time to take aim at what's really important, you know? We've had some fun with a weird little riddle, and solvin' it is a good enough reward for me.
"Now, if you'll hand me the phone, Bubba, we can start work on another little mystery. What say we try to figure out the mystery of what's in Mrs. Hudson's Meat-Eater's Special. And you can be certain, it's gonna be 'fowl.'"