Rhubarb Pie Before You Die

by Gin Jones

“The bags aren’t all yours,” Rory said irritably. “We’ve been collecting from this neighborhood for years.”

  “Ha!” Graham scoffed. “I know that’s a lie. Mabel just admitted she only recently come to West Slocum. She couldn’t have been with you before.”

  “Enough,” Lambert said. “Half and half is a fair split.”

  Graham grumbled something under his breath, and then said, “All right. But I’m taking the odd-numbered side.”

  “Fine,” Rory agreed.

  Graham glared at Mabel. “It’s your farm. Do you agree too? Or is Rory authorized to act as your agent?”

  Mabel sometimes thought she was Rory’s agent, not the other way around, but now wasn’t the time to bring that up. “I agree.”

  Graham peered at her. “You don’t sound sure. I don’t want to hear anything later about how this contract was entered under duress.”

  “I’m sure.” Mabel tried to project confidence. Her words may still have sounded uncertain, but that was just how she always sounded. Whenever she needed to be tough, she got her attorney to do the talking. “No duress whatsoever.”

  “Okay,” Graham said. “But the agreement is only for tonight’s collection. The rest of the season’s collections belong to me.”

  “Wait,” Rory said. “We didn’t agree to that.”

  Lambert made a time-out sign with his hands. “Enough. I’ll call Darryl Santangelo in the morning. He’s not terribly busy managing the farmers’ market this late in the season, so he should have time to listen to you present your claims during regular business hours. If he can’t help you come up with a solution, let me know and I’ll take it up with the town council. Just be warned that if it comes to that, I’ll recommend that no one but our trash contractors be allowed to pick up the yard waste, and then neither of you will get it.”

  “You can’t do that,” Graham said. “Letting farmers use the yard waste is already an established tradition, like common law.”

  “I can do it,” Lambert replied. “Dealing with yard waste wasn’t exactly why I joined the town council, but I’m sure my constituents will appreciate that I’m resolving the problem. Almost as much as I’ll appreciate going back to bed without you three continuing to keeping me awake. Now go get your agreed-upon bags. And don’t make me come back out here again. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a dozen calls from the neighbors at some ridiculously early time tomorrow, so you’d better hope I’ve gotten some sleep before then, or you won’t like the consequences.”

  He turned and headed back to his front porch.

  Graham didn’t seem to know when to shut up. He shouted at Rory, “You won for now, but this isn’t over.” As he spoke, his barn coat blew open to reveal an orange-handled knife about a foot long in a leather sheath affixed to a belt that cinched in the waist of his baggy overalls. The leather was well worn, but cleaner and in better shape than Graham’s clothes, suggesting he both valued it and used it regularly. He rested his hand on the hilt before adding, “I’ll get what I need, one way or another.”

  Rory didn’t seem to have noticed the weapon, and waved at him dismissively before starting to cross the dark street for the bags that had been allocated to Stinkin’ Stuff Farm.

  Mabel caught her by the arm. “Let it go for now, please.”

  “But your aunt never would have—”

  “I’m not my aunt.” Mabel used her grip on Rory’s arm to tug her over toward the driver’s side of the farm’s truck. “I’ll deal with Graham later, in my own way.”

  “I heard that,” Graham shouted. He turned toward the town councilor’s retreating back, which had almost reached the porch. “She threatened me.”

  Lambert turned around, and even in the dark, even with Mabel’s poor people-reading skills, it was obvious he was going to explode if the situation continued. Things could get out of hand pretty quickly. And Graham had a knife. A big knife.

  Mabel’s instincts always called for her to run and hide from situations that involved the risk of even mild confrontation, and they were even more emphatic when there was a risk of violence. Now was not the time to ignore those instincts.

  “I did not threaten anyone,” Mabel called out from a safe distance, just to set the record straight, while urgently pushing Rory toward the driver’s side door of the truck. “But there’s no need to argue. We’re leaving right now. Graham can have all the yard waste tonight.”

  “But—” Rory gave her a confused look.

  “Get in and drive,” Mabel said quietly but firmly. “Or I will. And you really don’t want me behind the wheel of a vehicle this big.”

  Chapter 2

  The next morning, Mabel woke to the persistent yowling of her cat, Pixie. She did that whenever a vehicle entered the farm’s driveway, but usually settled down after a single warning screech.

  Not this time.

  After the third howl, Mabel peered blearily at the time. Nine in the morning. And she’d only gone to bed four hours earlier. She’d been too wired to sleep after getting home from the confrontation with Graham, so she’d spent some time reading her aunt’s journals, hoping there might be some hints in there for how the farm could be made more marketable.

  It had taken a long time before Mabel had been able to stop mentally replaying the confrontation with Graham. On the way home, Rory had tried to convince Mabel that the knife she’d seen on Graham’s belt wasn’t a weapon, just a standard tool that he probably hadn’t even remembered he was wearing. She’d explained that it was a hori-hori or “dig-dig” knife that many farmers and dedicated gardeners used for a variety of tasks. In Graham’s case, it would be useful for digging holes for planting rhubarb seedlings and then, later in the life cycle, for cutting the poisonous leaves off the harvested stalks.

  Mabel deferred to Rory in all things plant-related, but this was a matter of safety and common sense. The knife and the man carrying it were dangerous. There hadn’t been any reason, like seedlings to plant or stalks to separate from leaves, to have it on him when they’d been arguing over the mulch. And Mabel was absolutely certain that the security staff wouldn’t let Graham into the courthouse while carrying the knife if he went there today as he’d threatened. That made it a weapon.

  Pixie continued to yowl, making it impossible for Mabel to go back to sleep. She dragged herself out of bed and headed for her aunt’s bedroom to see who was in the parking lot outside the barn. The only person she’d been expecting at all, and not at this early hour, was Rory, who’d offered to come make sure all the supplies and tools were ready for the planting of the following year’s garlic crop. Mabel was still hoping against fading hope that she’d find a buyer for the farm before the drop-dead date of Halloween for getting the cloves into the ground. Then the buyer would be responsible for the planting or possibly transforming the fields into beds for a different crop. She didn’t care so much about the specific crop the buyer grew, as long as the land remained used for agriculture. That was what her aunt would have wanted. But if Mabel didn’t find a buyer soon, she was going to have to plant the garlic for next year, just to maintain the property value.

  Mabel made her way through the clutter of her aunt’s bedroom and pulled back the curtain. Where she’d expected to see Rory’s small green pickup parked next to Aunt Mabel’s larger truck was instead a white SUV, with a real estate broker’s logo and contact information printed on the hood, trunk, and all four doors. Danny Avila, Jr., was also the town’s mayor, so the bumper was plastered with reelection stickers from at least three previous elections. According to Rory, citizens had elected or reelected him—by huge margins—each time. Not so much due to his incredible political skill however, but because no one else was interested in the part-time, low-paying, high-stress job.

  Mabel rushed back to her bedroom and the rocking chair where she’d thrown yesterday’s jeans and t-shirt. They were reasonably clean, since she hadn
’t been out in the fields yesterday, and the dirty work of collecting the yard waste had ended almost before it began. Besides, she didn’t have time to hunt for something fresher.

  She paused before dressing in order to pat the still intermittently screeching orange cat that had moved from her original spot next to the pillows to the bottom of the bed. “It’s okay now, Pixie. I’m awake now, and I know who our visitor is. It’s someone I want to see. Maybe he’s brought a nice, young farmer looking to strike out and buy his own place, and he’ll fall madly in love with Stinkin’ Stuff Farm. A match made in heaven.”

  Pixie yowled, and Mabel corrected herself as she stepped into her jeans. “You’re right. It would be even better if it were a nice, young farmer looking to buy her own place. But either way, we’d be able to sell the farm and get our lives back to normal.”

  Pixie made it loudly clear that she was not amused and headed for the stairs. Mabel quickly finished tugging on her jeans and t-shirt and followed the cat down to the kitchen where the yowling resumed. At least it was no longer at ear-splitting level, more of a grumble than a yowl.

  Mabel raced outside to greet her broker. Danny was of average height and stockily built, with perpetually tanned skin and what looked from a distance to be a thick head of dark, tightly curled hair but which everyone knew was a hairpiece that covered a rapidly balding head. Apparently the hair, like everything else about him, was intended to make him into a replica of his father, from his appearance to his role as the mayor. Rory had once said it was rumored Danny even wore his late father’s suits, a tribute to the older man’s frugal ways as well as to his habit of always dressing as if he were the head of a much bigger and more important municipality. Danny definitely carried his father’s battered old leather legal pad portfolio, the Sr. of the gold-etched name still visible on the front.

  Despite his quirks, Danny had done his father proud, since at thirty-eight, he was already a four-term mayor. Of course, according to Rory, it had helped that his father had been the town’s quietly competent mayor for the better part of fifty years, so when he’d died and his son was on the ballot to replace him, most residents probably hadn’t even noticed the Jr. and had simply voted for the familiar name.

  Standing beside Danny was a taller man wearing jeans, polo shirt, and a blazer that fit his broad shoulders and muscular arms so well it must have been custom tailored. He looked to be around the same age as Aunt Peggy had been—fifty—when she’d had her epiphany about the meaninglessness of her accounting career and had jettisoned it for an agricultural one.

  “Mabel!” The mayor’s excited tone would have been more appropriate for greeting a long-lost friend or relative, but he used it to greet everyone. He usually accompanied it by a hug, but after the time Mabel ran out of patience with reminding him she preferred to maintain a substantial bit of personal space and had stomped on his toes to get him to step back, he’d finally accepted that the most he would get was a handshake. “I know you prefer it if I text you first before showing the property, but I couldn’t wait to introduce you to Thomas Porter. He’s interested in buying your farm. He’s got great plans for it, and he’s willing to pay your asking price, cash deal.”

  Porter reached out eagerly to shake Mabel’s hand. “I insisted on Danny bringing me here right away, as soon as he described the property to me.” His glance flicked down to her t-shirt, not in a leering way, but in confusion. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important.”

  Mabel looked down to see that she’d put her t-shirt on inside out. So much for making a good impression on a potential buyer.

  “I was just doing farm things,” she said vaguely. Sleeping was part of living on a farm, after all. “You know how it is. The work never ends. No time for me to worry about fashion when there are crops to be planted or weeded or harvested.” Not that she’d ever worried about fashion before becoming a farmer either. One of the many nice things about working from home for a long-distance employer was that no one cared what you wore, as long as you did your job.

  “I can’t wait to shed my office clothes and get to work in the great outdoors.” Porter definitely looked like he came from the more traditional office environment where people did care what you wore. His image was all wrong for a farmer, with his form-fitting blazer and his pale, unweathered skin. His muscles suggested he was fit enough to work in the fields, but his clean fingernails and hands that had softer skin than Mabel’s had been before she’d come to the farm confirmed that he didn’t spend much time digging in the dirt. Of course, she didn’t look much like a farmer either—she had no particularly noticeable muscles, and her skin was even paler than his, thanks to a preference for being indoors whenever possible, plus copious amounts of sunscreen whenever she went outside. Yet, here she was, the callused-palmed owner of a farm known for growing the best garlic on the East Coast.

  “Have you seen the property already?” Mabel asked. “Or was Danny”—the mayor always insisted on everyone calling him by his first name, just like his father had been addressed, and as long as he respected her personal space, she felt obligated to respect his preference for informality—“just about to give you a tour?”

  “I’ve seen all I need to already,” Porter said. “This is the perfect farm for me, the one I’ve dreamed about for years. I can’t wait to put my own stamp on it. Perhaps we could sit down somewhere now and agree on the basic terms of the sale.”

  Could it really be happening? A sale that would get her back to Maine and her old job before the end of the year? And all she needed to do was provide a table and chairs?

  “I’ve got just the place.” Her aunt had loved being surrounded by friends, so she’d expanded the old kitchen area a few years earlier to add a huge dining room and then had filled it with a table large enough to seat at least a dozen people. It seldom got used to capacity now that Mabel owned the property, but it seemed fitting that arrangements for carrying on her aunt’s farming legacy would happen at her aunt’s table. “Follow me.”

  Pixie was waiting for them with her tail puffed out in irritation, sitting on the corner of the massive rustic trestle table just to the right of the door. The kitchen, despite the relatively recent work done for the addition, was a throwback to the 1960s, with a harvest-gold stove, an avocado green vintage wall phone, and a pineapple-motif wallpaper that perfectly matched both colors. There was a pineapple-shaped clock that needed a new battery, but other than that, everything was in good condition, if not to Mabel’s taste. She wouldn’t be living there for much longer, so she hadn’t seen any point in redecorating when the new buyer would just change everything to his taste later anyway. The only thing she’d done to the house since arriving in July was to install insulating curtains in her bedroom, more to dampen the sound of inconsiderately noisy early birds, both avian and human, than for any temperature-controlling benefits.

  Mabel waved at the table, and the two men took seats next to each other on the long side, across from the irritably tail-swishing Pixie.

  Danny unzipped his leather portfolio and said, “I hear you and Rory Hansen got into a bit of mischief last night. Trespassing, breach of the peace, and a dozen other similar misdemeanors.”

  Mabel had long since accepted that people would talk about her—she’d been the subject of considerable gossip, some true, some not, ever since her parents’ deaths in a work-related accident when she was a child—and while she didn’t like it, she knew the chatter couldn’t hurt her. Especially not if it happened in West Slocum. She’d be leaving soon, so it didn’t really matter what people thought of her, and they would forget her soon enough. But Rory had a reputation to uphold. Not just because she was active in the community, running the CSA and volunteering for other local nonprofits but also because her husband was a police officer, whose own reputation could be affected by his family’s perceived misbehavior.

  “We didn’t do anything wrong,” Mabel insisted. “We were o
n a public road, and even the town councilman who lives there said we had equal rights to the yard waste. Graham Winthrop was the one being unreasonable.”

  “That’s not what Graham told me,” Danny said. “He called me in the middle of the night to tell me he’s planning to seek criminal charges against you two, and he expected me to back him up with the police department. I tried to make him see reason, but you know how he is.”

  “The facts are on our side.”

  “Still, you need to be careful with Graham. He’s a lawyer, so he knows how to work the system.” Danny flipped open his portfolio to reveal the legal pad inside. “But let’s not worry about that right now. We’ve got much more interesting possibilities to consider.”

  There was something less than inspiring about Danny’s forced optimism, unlike the take-it-to-the-bank certainty that emanated from Jeff Wright, her attorney back in Maine. She’d always been able to refer any problem or project whatsoever to him and not give it a second thought, confident he had her best interest in mind, and he would either take care of the matter on her behalf or give her solid advice on what she needed to do. She wished she could feel the same way about entrusting the farm’s sale to Danny. She’d only signed with him because Jeff hadn’t had anyone better to recommend, and everyone said Danny was the only broker within a hundred miles who knew the West Slocum market inside and out. She hated the feeling that she had to double-check everything he did, but the farm had meant too much to Aunt Peggy to sell it to the wrong person.

  “So, we’re agreed on the listing price as the selling price, right?” Danny took the pen out of its slot inside the portfolio.

  Pixie drowned out Porter’s apparent agreement.

  Mabel waited for the sound to peter out before saying, “Yes.”

  Pixie yowled her disagreement again and stalked over to Danny, who was closer to her than the other man. She swiped at the hand that held the pen before continuing over to slash at the sleeve of Porter’s blazer.