Rhubarb Pie Before You Die
Page 1
Inheriting her late aunt’s Massachusetts farm is no gift for app developer Mabel Skinner, who is about to learn that even the best-grown garlic can’t ward off murderous intent . . .
Mabel’s hope of finding an enthusiastic farmer to buy Stinkin’ Stuff Farm is dying a little bit every day. So far, all she’s found are double-dealing developers. But after a heated dispute over grass clippings with an obsessive local rhubarb breeder, she discovers something even more distressing—the breeder in question undisputedly dead in his greenhouse. . . .
Uncomfortably aware that she might be a prime suspect, Mabel stops digging in the dirt long enough to dig up more information about the dead man, and anyone else he might have argued with. The list is longer than she imagined, and includes a persnickety neighbor and a rival rhubarb breeder. With all the ingredients for a homegrown mystery, Mabel must unearth a killer—before the next plot to be dug is her grave. . . .
Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com
Also by Gin Jones
Garlic Farm Mysteries
Six Cloves Under
Helen Binney Mysteries
A Dose of Death
A Denial of Death
A Draw of Death
“A (Gingerbread) Diorama of Death” (short story in Cozy Christmas Shorts)
A Dawn of Death
A Darling of Death
A Display of Death
Danger Cove Quilting Mysteries
Four Patch of Trouble
Tree of Life and Death
Robbing Peter to Kill Paul
Deadly Thanksgiving Sampler
“Not-So-Bright Hopes” (short story in Pushing Up Daisies)
Danger Cove Farmers’ Market Mysteries
“A Killing in the Market” (short story in Killer Beach Reads)
A Death in the Flower Garden
A Slaying in the Orchard
A Secret in the Pumpkin Patch
Two Sleuths Are Better Than One
Rhubarb Pie Before You Die
A Garlic Farm Mystery
Gin Jones
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Contents
Also by Gin Jones
Rhubarb Pie Before You Die
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
RECIPES
Copyright
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2020 by Gin Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use.
Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.
Lyrical Underground and Lyrical Underground logo Reg. US Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: December 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0959-3 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0959-7 (ebook)
First Print Edition: December 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0962-3
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0962-7
Printed in the United States of America
Chapter 1
“Are you sure this is legal?” Mabel Skinner asked, reluctantly grabbing hold of the nearest yard-waste bag filled with leaves and grass clippings. She’d called her attorney hours ago with the same question, but he hadn’t picked up the private line that he shared only with family, friends, and a very few long-term clients like herself. It wasn’t like him to ignore her. He’d been representing her since her parents died when she was a young child, and he always either picked up her calls or returned them within an hour or two. Just not today.
“Your aunt and I didn’t encounter any problems, and we’ve been doing it for the past five years,” Rory Hansen said, not quite answering the question. She had been one of Aunt Peggy’s best friends, and was honoring that friendship by helping Mabel keep the farm going until it could be sold. Rory was in her forties, tanned from her own outdoor work with the local CSA—Community-Supported Agriculture—group, and tall with a solid build.
She casually tossed her own bag full of yard waste into Aunt Peggy’s old but well-maintained black Ford F-150 truck. It was Mabel’s truck now, she reminded herself, along with everything else at the Stinkin’ Stuff Farm, even if she never actually drove the huge truck herself, deferring to Rory or farmhands to do it. Her Mini Cooper was much more her size.
Mabel had always been risk-averse, even as a child, and then her natural inclinations had been exacerbated by losing her parents to a freak accident. Still, she’d let herself be convinced by Rory that their late-night activity couldn’t get them into too much trouble. After all, Rory had been married to a local police officer for close to twenty years and would never do anything to embarrass him professionally, the way getting herself arrested for trespassing and theft would.
Mabel got a better grip on her paper bag and managed to get it into the back of the truck, although with a lot more effort than her friend had exerted. She tucked her cold hands into the oversized pockets of her aunt’s green barn coat. It was going to be a long night, and a chilly one too. She’d never been much of an outdoor person or a physically active one. She would have much preferred to be back at the farmhouse, in bed, and hunched over her laptop, rather than out here in a neatly manicured subdivision at midnight, collecting bags of what she’d been assured was chemical-free yard waste, perfect for mulching the rows of garlic that would be planted in another couple of weeks at the end of October.
The late-night hour didn’t bother her—even if she’d been back at the farmhouse, she wouldn’t have been ready to sleep for hours yet. Normally at this time of night, she’d have been working at her job, developing apps for her employer, but she was on hiatus while searching for someone to buy the garlic farm she’d inherited f
rom her aunt. Selling was proving to be much more difficult than she’d anticipated. She’d hoped to be back in Maine before it was time to plant the next season’s garlic crop, so the new owner could do it, but that was starting to look unlikely. She’d considered just leaving the fields fallow until the title changed hands, but both Rory and the real estate broker had said that the property would be more valuable if it remained a working farm with a demonstrable stream of income.
“Why can’t we just buy some mulch instead of stealing it?” Mabel asked.
“It’s not stealing.” Rory grabbed another bag. “It’s composting. Plus, we’re saving the town from having to pick it up and transport it to the landfill. It’s win-win for everyone.”
Mabel’s phone pinged in her pocket, and she took it out to check who had texted her. It was from her boss, Phil Reed. She put the phone away without responding. It wouldn’t be fair to make Rory do all the work. Mabel grabbed another bag.
“Who texts you at midnight?” Rory asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s just my boss.”
“I thought you were on hiatus until you sell the farm.”
“I am, but he likes to check in on me from time to time. He’s hoping I’ll find a buyer quickly and come back to work soon before the year-end rush.”
“I’m not,” Rory said, tossing her bag into the pickup. “I’m hoping you change your mind and decide to stay here in West Slocum and continue what Peggy started.”
“I won’t let Aunt Peggy’s legacy be destroyed. I don’t have to live here to do that though. I’ve told the broker that I’ll only sell to another farmer. Stinkin’ Stuff Farm will continue.”
“It’s not just the farm’s future that I’m concerned about.” Rory turned to lean against the black truck’s tailgate. “I’ll miss you when you leave.”
“Me too.” Just a few months earlier, Mabel wouldn’t have believed she’d feel any regrets about leaving West Slocum. She hadn’t wanted to personally oversee her aunt’s estate and would have delegated it to an agent if she could have, but Jeff Wright, her friend and lawyer, had insisted she had to do it herself. She’d expected to get in and out in just a few days without any personal entanglement, but Rory and the owner of the goat farm next door, Emily Colter, had quickly dragged Mabel into their circle of friendship. Initially, the two women may have only been honoring her aunt’s memory and Mabel had only considered them her aunt’s friends, not her own. Over the last three months though, Mabel thought they’d all come to like each other for who they were, not just for their respective connections with Peggy Skinner.
A rusty old beige pickup screeched to a halt behind Mabel’s truck on the otherwise deserted street. A bearded man jumped out, leaving the engine running. He wore overalls that were both too short and far too wide for his tall, thin frame, and an equally baggy brown barn coat not unlike the one Mabel was wearing. She’d had to take hers from her aunt’s closet, since she hadn’t brought any warm-weather clothes with her when she’d come to West Slocum in July.
“Hey!” the man shouted from beside the open driver’s side door. “You’re stealing my stuff.”
That was exactly what Mabel had been afraid of. That one of the home owners would accuse her and Rory of wrongdoing. She knew she should do something to mollify the man, but she’d had never been any good at dealing with emotional people. Or even logical people who disagreed with her, actually, but it was worse when they were angry.
Mabel looked at Rory, who was much better with people. After all, she’d convinced the outdoors-averse and morning-averse Mabel to be a farmer, even if only temporarily. She still didn’t quite know how it had happened. Rory was that good. Better to leave this situation to her. Mabel wouldn’t be doing her friend any favors by trying to talk to the guy and only making him angrier.
“Relax,” Rory whispered. “I’ll take care of this. Graham Winthrop doesn’t have any more right to the mulch than you do. He lives about the same distance from here and has no direct connection to anyone in this subdivision.”
“But if it matters so much to him…” Mabel trailed off.
“It matters to you too,” Rory said firmly. “Besides, Graham’s got only a tiny parcel of land and doesn’t need all this mulch. He grows some rhubarb for the CSA in his back yard, but mostly he’s interested in breeding it. He’s hoping to develop a new standard for commercial production.”
The man from the truck stomped over to the pile of yard-waste bags, and stood in front of it, his legs and arms spread wide, making him look like a live scarecrow in the ill-fitting clothes that Mabel could now see were also torn and frayed from heavy use, not done intentionally as a fashion statement.
“Go away!” he shouted. “These are mine. All the bags in this neighborhood are mine.”
Mabel would have told him he could have them, but Rory said, “Settle down, Graham. No need to cause a fuss. There’s more than enough here to share. We’ll even help you load your half.” She picked up the bag just beyond his outspread left arm and took a step toward the man’s pickup apparently to show she meant her words.
He grabbed the bag out of her hand, startling a brief, sharp scream out of her. She backed away with her hands raised. “Hey, I was just trying to help you.”
“The only help I want is for you to go away.”
“We aren’t going anywhere,” Rory said defiantly, even as porch lights came on at the house that had produced the contested bags of yard waste.
“Maybe we should leave.” Mabel nodded toward the lights. “I don’t want you to get in any trouble over this. I’m sure we can find other sources of mulch.”
Graham turned on her, raising his voice. “Other sources? What’s your definition of other sources?”
Mabel took an involuntary step backward. The man’s voice wasn’t just angry, it was loud. The sound had probably carried throughout the entire fifty-lot subdivision. Sure enough, a moment later additional lights went on in nearby houses.
“I don’t know what other sources there might be,” Mabel said. “But I’m sure we can find some.”
“You’d better not be planning to raid any of my other suppliers,” Graham said.
“No, of course not.”
“I’ll be watching you.” He glared at her. “And I’ll get an injunction if I so much as see your truck in my neighborhood.”
“Be reasonable, Graham,” Rory said. “You live on the corner of a main street. Mabel has to drive past there to get to the grocery store, the post office, and the library.”
“Not my problem,” he said. “I’m the innocent party here, so you two will have to be the ones being inconvenienced. It’s only fair and equitable.”
A man in plaid pajama bottoms, trying unsuccessfully to zip up his hastily thrown-on hoodie as he approached, arrived in time to respond. “Actually, Graham, I’m the one who’s being inconvenienced. Along with everyone else in this neighborhood. What the hell are you three doing out here at this hour?”
Mabel heard a slight sigh from Rory before her friend turned to face the newcomer. “Councilor Lambert. I’m sorry you had to get involved.”
He snorted. “I bet you are. Does Joe know that you’re out at this hour?”
Rory’s eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead at the suggestion she needed her husband’s permission to go out, but she kept her tone even. “I don’t keep any secrets from my husband. But you can’t blame him for this situation. Mabel and I were minding our own business, just taking away the unwanted yard waste to put it to good use, keeping it out of the waste stream and saving the town the expense of hauling it away, when Graham showed up and started causing trouble.”
Graham started to say something, but the councilor held up a hand for silence. Mabel was surprised when the other man closed his mouth.
“Who’s she?” Lambert asked, pointing at Mabel.
Mabel answ
ered with her name. Then, thinking that hardly anyone in town knew her yet, but everyone seemed to know and respect her aunt, so it wouldn’t hurt to do a little name-dropping, she added, “I’m Peggy Skinner’s niece. I inherited her Stinkin’ Stuff Farm a few months ago, and Rory’s been helping me to keep the farm going until I can find a buyer for it.”
“Objection,” Graham said. “None of this is relevant, Lambert. You need to tell them that the bags all belong to me, so I can get them picked up and go home. I can’t be out here all night. I’ve got to be in court in the morning.”
Getting the threatened injunction? And did that mean she needed to go to court too to stop it? Rory would expect her to defend the farm’s right to organic mulch, but Mabel wasn’t at her best early in the morning, and it was too late at night to call her lawyer so he could take care of it. He couldn’t get from Maine to West Slocum, Massachusetts, in time anyway.
Councilor Lambert wearily ran his hand over his face. “You’re waking everyone up over ownership of grass clippings?”
“We didn’t wake anyone up,” Rory said. “Graham did.”
“I wouldn’t have had to get loud if they’d been reasonable,” Graham denied hotly. “This stuff is valuable. Anyone who knows anything about organic gardening knows that. It’s even called black gold once it decomposes a bit.”
“He’s right about that much,” Rory said reluctantly. “Just not about what constitutes reasonableness. We offered to split it evenly, even though he’s got a smaller farm than Mabel does.”
“I don’t care,” Lambert said. “I just want to get some sleep. And so do my neighbors. They’re going to blame me if I don’t take care of this. So, either you three work it out—quietly—or you need to leave right now and no one gets the mulch.”
“How about we take the bags on the odd-numbered side of the street and Graham takes the ones on the even-numbered side?” Rory suggested.
“That’s not fair,” Graham shouted. “You’re not sacrificing anything, and you’re asking me to give up half of what belongs to me.”