Til Dirt Do Us Part (A Local Foods Mystery) (4 page)

“Wait. Whoever took could still be in here.” She still felt a chill unrelated to the temperature. “Would you go through the house with me?”

He rubbed his head. “All right.”

He stomped through the house and down the stairs without saying good-bye.

Cam swore to herself as she slammed the door shut behind him and threw the dead bolt. She knew she wasn’t crazy. But the creep factor of thinking she was being watched lingered even though her house was clear. Suddenly, the prospect of working alone in the fields all afternoon lost its attraction.

T
wo hours later Cam was back in the fields. After lunch and catching up on some bookkeeping, she resigned herself to the fact that farming didn’t harbor indulgences like fear. She stuck her cell phone in her back pocket and made sure the door to the house was securely locked. She pocketed the house key, too.

Tomorrow was shareholder pickup day. She couldn’t stand up her three dozen subscribers, most of whom were avid locavores, devoted to eating primarily locally grown food. Make that one less, now that Irene would no longer be claiming her share. Cam could donate the produce to the food bank in Newburyport. Or maybe she’d accept it as a slight lightening of her workload, selfish as that seemed.

She had squash to harvest, fall greens to cut, Brussels sprout stalks to gather, beets to dig, and so much more. She could postpone planting the garlic to another day. It only had to get in the ground anytime before the ground froze in December. At least today the sun had reemerged and the clouds had burned off. The night would get cold, but for the next few hours she could use some brightness in this day.

She was bent over the kabocha squash field, cutting the squat gray-green gourds from their stems, sunlight warming the back of her neck, when a woman’s voice sounded right behind her. Cam straightened and whirled, knife extended.

“Hey,
fazendeira.
It’s me. Thought you might want some help for tomorrow.”

“Jeez, Lucinda! You about gave me a heart attack.” Cam’s heart was, in fact, thumping in her throat. She took a deep breath.

“Why are you so jumpy?”

Cam shook her head. “No reason.”

“I heard about Irene. Tough business, right? That why you’re nervous?” Lucinda shoved back her wild black curls and tied them into a knot as she trained her eyes on Cam.

“It’s really tough. Did you hear about the—”

“Pigs? Crazy bad. The poor lady. And Bobby on the lam. I bet he killed her.”

“Of course he didn’t kill Irene! But where did you hear about it?”

“Oh, you know. It’s all over Facebook, the noon news. If somebody
didn’t
hear, I would be surprised.”

“I suppose you’re right. Pappas was here asking me all kinds of questions about last night. Hey, at least you didn’t argue with her in public. You and I are about the only ones who didn’t.”

Lucinda began loading the cut gourds into the cart. “I guess I have to find a new housecleaning job. Too bad. Irene paid really well, and she never left a mess.”

“Is it hard to find jobs?”

“Can be. You know of anybody who needs a cleaning service?”

“What about that lawyer, Susan Lee? I doubt she cleans her own house.”

“I’ll call her. Good idea.” Lucinda drew her brows together. “Last week I heard Irene on the phone in her office while I was dusting the floorboards in the hallway. Half the time when I worked there, she wasn’t even home. But this time she was, and she sounded really unhappy with somebody. Not scared, but not her usual bossy self.”

“Any idea who was on the other end of the call?”

Lucinda shook her head. “I’ll keep thinking about it, though. Sometimes when I let a thought hang around the back of my mind for a while, it pops up to me later.”

Cam nodded in agreement. She’d had the same experience. “If you think of it, you need to tell Pappas. Will you do that?”

“I guess. He’s so not my favorite guy. Last June, when he arrested me and then gave up looking for the real killer? Not good.”

“I know. But Irene’s killer shouldn’t be wandering around free, and he’s the detective on the case.”

“Cart’s full,” Lucinda said. “You want me to take the gourds to the barn?”

“We have to lay them out to cure. I set up a board on sawhorses outside the southern wall of the barn. Can you arrange them there?” As Lucinda headed away, hauling the loaded cart behind her, Cam added, “Meet you in the root field.”

Cam trudged, pitchfork in hand, to the long beds where she’d planted beets, daikon, rutabaga, carrots, parsnips, and turnips. Some would stay in the ground for a couple of additional months, sweetening up as the temperatures dropped. The parsnips she could leave in the ground to dulcify until well into winter, as long as she loosened the slender white taproot in its soil before the ground froze. The beet crop she was digging today had been an early planting, so the red orbs were fully mature.

As she dug, she wondered if Lucinda would in fact tell Pappas if she could recall who Irene had been talking with that day. Or if the information would advance the case at all. Cam frowned. Irene had imported and exported textiles and woven rugs. She might have had all kinds of foreign enemies if she dealt with her suppliers and customers the same way she treated locals. The last thing sleepy Westbury needed was a shadowy Tunisian rug merchant or an angry Asian silk dealer coming halfway around the world to exact revenge on Irene.

Cam tossed a handful of beets in a pile. Preston pounced out of nowhere, as if a beet had animated itself into a mouse.

“Mr. P, you haven’t seen any mysterious foreigners around town, have you?” Cam snorted. An exotic stranger would be as easy to spot in this provincial town as a white Blankoma beet in a basket of Red Aces.

By the time the sun approached the tall maples and birches at the back of Cam’s property, she and Lucinda had made a big dent in Cam’s harvest list.

“I’ll do the rest in the morning. Thanks for your help.”

Lucinda waved good-bye and drove off in her beat-up Civic.

After Cam washed her hands in the kitchen, she surveyed her refrigerator and her erstwhile wine rack, which was a cardboard wine box on its side. A currently empty box. Food, she had—Jake had left her a container of leftovers from the dinner. All the wine had been finished off last night, and she and Sim had consumed the small amount of beer that had been left. She grabbed her keys and wallet and walked to her truck. Such delicious food really called out for a nice glass of wine to go with it.

She left the Westbury Food Mart, wine, a six-pack of beer, and a few groceries in hand. A quarter mile later, a bad-sounding bumping started coming from the right front of the truck. She pulled over and got out to look. She swore at the half-flat tire. She knew her spare hung under the bed of the truck, but in the year since Great-Uncle Albert had given her the old Ford, she’d never had to use it. It was probably rusted in place. Dark was falling, and the temperature was, too. The last thing she wanted to do was crawl under the vehicle, free up the spare, and wrestle rusty lug nuts on the side of the road. If only this had happened at the Food Mart or in her driveway at the farm.

She spied a sign for SK Foreign Auto two doors down. Sim’s auto shop. “Yes!” She pumped her fist in the air. Then worried the shop might have closed for the day. She climbed back into the cab and drove the limping truck into the lot in front of the small shop. Lights shone out like a welcome beacon.

She slid her long legs out and moved toward the door. She halted. A panel van that had seen better days was parked in the dark on the side of the building. It looked a lot like the one Bobby Burr had driven to the farm most days over the summer. He had built shelves into the back of an old Ford Econoline to hold his carpentry supplies and tools. Cam thought about seeing if it was really his, but she had a flat tire to attend to first. She pulled open the door to the reception area. Sim stood, backlit, in the door to the garage bay and was speaking to someone Cam couldn’t see.

“It’s a mess, all right,” she said before turning toward Cam. She shut the door to the garage quickly and folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes darted once to the door and back to Cam. “What do you need, Cam?”

“I’m on my way home from the Food Mart, and I just got a really bad flat. But who were you just talking to?”

“I was talking to myself. Spilled some oil in there.”

“Oh. Anyway, would you help me change the tire?”

Sim raised her right eyebrow. “I’d have bet you were good with mechanical stuff.”

“I am, usually. It’s just that the spare is under the bed. It’s probably rusted in place given the condition of the rest of the truck.” She walked out to the truck. Sim followed.

Cam gestured at several patches of rust on the sides near the wheel wells. “I don’t even know if I have a jack. It was my great-uncle’s truck. I’ve been driving it for only a year.”

“No one should drive around without a jack.” Sim pursed her lips.

Cam opened her mouth to speak, but Sim held up a hand.

“Of course I’ll change it for you. Don’t worry. Can you hang on for a minute?”

Sim disappeared back inside. The door clicked firmly behind her. Cam waited, hugging herself from the cold, wishing she’d grabbed a thicker sweater.

Several minutes later one of the wide doors grumbled its way open, and Sim appeared in the opening. She told Cam to drive in and directed her onto the lift, which clanged twice as Cam’s wheels found their positions.

“Emergency brake off. Leave it in neutral,” Sim called as she closed the wide door again. She sauntered to the back of the shop and flipped on a radio. Speakers on a shelf above it played the latest by the Black Keys.

Cam climbed out and stood to the side. The space smelled of oil and rubber and dust.

Sim checked a few things and pulled a lever at the side of the bay. The truck rose into the air with periodic clunks. She stopped it when the wheels were at her shoulder height, and began to remove the tire. She ducked underneath with a big wrench to whack the rusted part that secured the spare.

“The van out there looks a lot like Bobby’s,” Cam said. “Did he show up earlier today? What was his reaction to Irene’s death?”

“What van?” Sim kept working.

“The Econoline. It’s right around the side of the building.”

“It’s my cousin’s.” The wrench Sim held slipped and clattered on the cement floor. She swore, sucked on a scraped knuckle, picked it up again.

“So you never got hold of Bobby?” Cam glanced at the door to the reception area. The glass in the top portion was dark. When had Sim turned off the light? It had been on when Cam arrived. Cam supposed she could have been Skyping with somebody. Cam used the free Internet service herself on occasion to communicate with her parents when they were overseas, which was almost always.

Sim hauled the bad tire over to an air hose and filled it. She turned it, examining the worn black rubber all over. She straightened.

“You need a new tire.” She checked the other three tires remaining on the truck. “Girlfriend, you won the lottery. You need a whole new set. Treads are way too smooth for safety.”

Cam groaned. This was an expense she hadn’t planned for.

“I’ll put the spare on for now, if it’s any good. You can think about the new set, but I wouldn’t wait too long. It’ll be snowing before you know it.” She gestured toward a grimy molded plastic chair that had started life white. “Make yourself comfortable.”

It took Sim only a few minutes to add air to the spare, mount it, and lower the truck. After she tightened the final lug nut, she threw the bad wheel in the back of the truck. “It’s a full-size spare, so you’re okay to drive around town.” Sim wiped her hands on a red rag.

“What do I owe you?”

“Nothing.” Sim waved her off with a frown.

“You sure?” Cam stood.

Sim nodded.

“Can I bring the truck in for an oil change on Monday?” Cam asked. “It’s overdue, and I don’t think I need to go anywhere that day.”

Sim checked her smart phone and gave Cam the thumbs-up. She tapped in the appointment. “Have it here by eight, all right?”

Cam agreed and thanked Sim, who raised the garage door and stepped outside. She directed Cam as she backed out. Sim waved and reentered the shop, lowering the door after her.

Cam paused to glance at the side of the building. The van was gone.

A
glass of red wine accompanied Cam as she settled onto the old couch in her living room. Preston settled himself onto a pile of newspapers on the floor, crackling the paper as he got comfortable. The leftovers had been perfect.

She pressed the TV remote and wandered through the channels, hoping for an old movie or maybe an interesting History Channel show. She passed the local news channel and then backed up. A senior reporter was interviewing Howard Fisher.

“Tell us again what happened on your farm this morning, Mr. Fisher.” The slender woman, her silver-streaked hair perfectly arrayed around her face, held the microphone toward the farmer with a look that said she was listening only to him.

Howard cleared his throat. “I was going out to feed them. The pigs. They eat a lot, you know. And I saw her. It was terrible.” The fingers on his right hand scrabbled nervously on his leg. He wore the same clothes Cam had always seen him in, but the contrast between his worn work outfit and the reporter’s stylish red jacket and slim black skirt made him look shabbier than usual.

“Describe what you saw for us.” Her tone implied great drama.

“Well, it was that Ms. Burr. She was lying in the sty, and the pigs was chewing on her legs. She’s always wearing those nice clothes, but she was muddy and . . .” He shuddered. “She was just plain dead, all right.”

“Do you know how she got in there?”

Howard shook his head several times. “No idea. She had no business there.”

“Were you at a farm-to-table dinner last night?”

“It was up to that Cam Flaherty’s farm. Attic Hill Farm, used to be called. Now she’s got some fancy new name for it.”

Cam groaned. Drag her and her farm into it. The kind of publicity she didn’t need.

“Produce Plus Plus Farm. Irene Burr was there, as well. Is that correct, sir? Did you speak to Ms. Burr there?”

“Maybe.” Harold tossed his head. “They were cooking my pork at the dinner, so I went. Don’t like that kind of affair, generally.” He turned half away, seeming to listen to someone. He nodded as he faced the camera again. “That’s all I got to say.”

The reporter thanked him and turned back to face to the camera. “As the authorities pursue persons of interest in the case, we’ll continue to follow these dramatic events, bringing you the latest news about tragic death in the sty.”

Cam clicked off the set. Her own farm hadn’t gotten dragged too far into the affair. But she was willing to bet customers wouldn’t be clamoring to eat pork from Howard Fisher’s farm now.

Cam arose a few minutes after sunrise the next morning. She had knocked off work too early the day before and needed to bring in the rest of the harvest before the first subscribers arrived at noon. She put the coffee on, flicked on the radio, and powered up the computer. The local radio news said nothing about Bobby showing up or about Irene’s murder other than “No arrest has been made in the case.” She checked the news online and didn’t learn anything new. She printed out her harvest list before locking the door.

She trudged to the barn, wearing her work sweater. The day would warm up later, but for now the dawn air was cool, despite the sunshine slanting over the neighbor’s field. She sighed. Farming solo was a big job. When it weighed heavily on her, she imagined being in a partnership with a man who might be her lover and her fellow grower in one package. That she might find such an ideal person seemed like a fantasy at this point. Maybe she should break down and hire a farmhand instead.

With a start she realized she hadn’t even given a thought to Jake yesterday. He’d been jealous at the dinner event, despite their series of very enjoyable dates over the summer. Cam had done nothing to provoke his ire. He imagined flirtation where there was none, at least not on her part. Or was there? Bobby was certainly cute. Competent. Fit. Smart.

Cam questioned again the wisdom of being entangled romantically with Jake. She relied on him to buy and promote her organic produce. The orders she delivered to the restaurant made a big difference to her business’s bottom line. She couldn’t afford to lose Jake as a customer, and she usually enjoyed his company. She sighed again, grabbed her field scissors and a basket, and headed out through grass wet with dew to cut three dozen bunches of greens.

Back in her kitchen at ten thirty, Cam popped a last bite of toast in her mouth and took her second cup of coffee out of the microwave. She had an hour and a half to finish up before the subscribers arrived. She sat at the computer to check the two recipes she planned to print for them, a little extra bonus she threw in every week. It particularly helped the customers who weren’t accustomed to cooking a surfeit of fresh vegetables. This week she had typed up a recipe for stuffed baked kabocha squash with rosemary and shallots. Jake had agreed to share his recipe for the sweet potato empanada appetizer from the farm-to-table event, so she’d transcribed that, too. Luckily, she’d written it down a couple of days before the dinner. If she’d asked him after the dinner, he might not have been so forthcoming.

“Crud,” Cam said. Rosemary. She hadn’t cut the bouquets of herbs yet. Well, that was an easy job. A lot easier than being friendly and sociable to her subscribers for the three-hour window during which they drifted in to collect their weekly assortment of roots, fruits, and greens. Being chatty seemed to be a requirement of the job of a farmer with regular customers. While it was getting a little easier for Cam since she’d started, she still preferred to be alone with either a collection of software bugs or an infestation of asparagus beetles.

She hurried out the door with the sheaf of papers. She got halfway to the barn, dashed back to lock the door, and hurried to the table inside the barn where she’d already set up most of the week’s offerings.

“Cam, want some help?” Ellie popped around the corner of the barn. The petite girl wore a red-striped soccer jersey, short glossy black shorts, and black and red socks pulled up over knee pads, with a black fleece thrown over her shoulders. “My dad dropped me off early so I could give you a hand. We won our second game. I even scored a goal.”

“Nice job. Sure, I could use some help. Can you cut rosemary, parsley, thyme, and sage? You know the drill. Three dozen bunches. The trug is a good basket for that.”

“Sweet.” Ellie sauntered over to grab scissors and the flat basket with a handle from the back of the barn. “Hey, I heard that Irene lady was killed. That’s wicked bad.”

Cam agreed.

“Did they, like, catch anybody yet?” A shadow passed over the teen’s cheery, chatty mood.

“As of earlier this morning there was no arrest. I feel bad for Mr. Fisher. They found her on his farm.” Cam glanced at Ellie’s worried look. “I’m sure there’s nothing to be afraid of. It had to be someone with a grudge against Ms. Burr.”

Ellie nodded. “I bet you’re glad it didn’t happen here. Again.”

Cam agreed, then exclaimed, “I forgot the Brussels sprouts! See you back here.” She grabbed a pair of long-handled loppers and hauled the cart out back. They had an hour until customers arrived, but cutting the thick stalks could be tough.

The three-foot-tall plants with their orbs clustered on them like alien eyes grew in the field farthest back toward the woods. She should leave them to sweeten up as the weather grew colder, but the shares were a bit scant this week. As she recalled, she’d planted enough for several weeks of harvest, anyway.

Cam bent over the first plant and lopped off the inch-thick woody stem right above the ground. She let it fall away and moved on to the next one. She was about to cut it when a small green cabbage worm fell onto her wrist.

Cam swore as she dropped the tool. She knocked the worm to the ground and smashed it with her boot. If cabbage moths had infested her crop with their larvae, no one would want to eat the sprouts. She examined the rest of the plant. A few leaves showed holes, but most of it looked fine, and the sprouts themselves didn’t display evidence of being eaten away. She quickly strode down the row. The plants at the far end showed more worm damage, so she pulled four up by their roots and threw them as far as she could into the border of the woods.

She checked her watch. Resuming lopping, Cam counted as she went until she’d cut enough stalks. She gathered up an armful and started toward the cart.

“Cam,” a voice called in a loud whisper.

Cam dropped the stalks where she stood. She looked around her with quick moves of her head. It wasn’t Ellie’s voice. She couldn’t see anyone. Her heart thumped as her skin prickled with cold fear.

“I’m here,” the voice went on. “Here,” it urged.

She grabbed the loppers. The voice came from the woods, from near where she’d tossed the infested plants. There was something familiar about it.

“Who’s there?” Her voice barely emerged. She tried again, and this time it rang clear. She trained her eyes on the spot where she thought the person was hiding.

A head leaned out from behind a thick maple. Bobby Burr’s head.

Cam closed her eyes for a moment and let the threat subside in her body. She opened them and walked toward him until they were face-to-face.

“What are you doing here? Why are you back there?” She took a close look at him. A brown pine needle stuck out of his black hair. He was dressed in old jeans and a sweatshirt. His face bore a smudge of dirt. It was his eyes that alarmed her. They looked like he had seen the abyss.

“Are you all right?” Cam asked.

He didn’t speak. His eyes darted around the field in front of him.

“You heard Irene was killed, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Cam, I heard.” He kept his voice low and urgent. “I also heard the police are looking for me.”

“Well, sure. You’re her stepson. So you talk to them. You didn’t kill her, right?”

He shook his head at a funereal pace.

“So? Come to the house. You look like you could use a cup of coffee, maybe some breakfast.”

“No! I can’t. You don’t understand.”

“Make me understand.”

“It’s complicated.” Bobby stared at the trees. “After the dinner, Irene and I—”

“Cam?” Ellie’s voice called out from a distance. “Subscribers are here.”

Cam looked over her shoulder, but she couldn’t see Ellie. “Be right there,” she called in return. She started to speak to Bobby as she turned back. But he wasn’t there. He was running, crashing through the brush, disappearing back into the woods.

“Bobby, wait! Let’s talk.” Cam started after him, but he didn’t slow and soon was out of sight. She pulled to a halt, wishing she could help him. However, she had a business to run. Still, as she returned to the sprouts, she wished he’d finished telling her what had happened between him and Irene after the dinner. And wondered if she should tell Pappas she’d seen him.