Rhubarb Pie Before You Die

by Gin Jones

  “All the time,” Sandy said easily. “We worked out an informal agreement years ago. But he got a bit delusional the last few months. He thought I was trying to steal his work, when I was just trying to make sure he would let me know about any breakthroughs so they could get the publicity they deserved.”

  “And you could get some of the credit.”

  “Okay, sure, I wanted my name associated with anything that came out of the research,” Sandy said. “But why shouldn’t I? Graham wasn’t in a position to write academic papers on his work, and he didn’t have the contacts to sell any discovery to a wholesaler. I do.”

  That made sense. It still didn’t completely exonerate Sandy. After all, she’d admitted that Graham had become difficult in the end. Maybe she’d lost patience with him, or they’d had one last argument like the ones Lena had overheard, and he’d reneged on their earlier agreement, so Sandy had killed him in frustration.

  Mabel didn’t know what to believe, and subtlety wasn’t getting her anywhere. Time to go with her strengths and be blunt. “Look, I’m pretty sure the detective thinks I killed Graham, and it’s not a good idea to leave the state to go to a friend’s funeral until the killer is caught, so I need to know who really did it, and I don’t have time to play games. Where were you the morning Graham died?”

  Sandy laughed. “I thought you weren’t as interested in my fields as you claimed to be.”

  “They’re really nice fields.” Even to Mabel, it sounded lame, but she didn’t know what else to say. How would she have described her aunt’s fields in positive terms? “They look all … fertile and … um, weed-free.”

  “Thanks,” Sandy said, still clearly amused. “And you can cross me off your suspect list. I wasn’t anywhere near Graham’s greenhouse that morning. I was doing some last-minute prep for a lecture until about eight thirty, and then I was giving that lecture between nine and ten.”

  If that was true, she couldn’t possibly have killed Graham. She’d have to ask Terry if he could confirm whether there really had been a class then. “I suppose your students will confirm that you were there then.”

  Sandy shrugged. “Who knows what students remember. Every time I grade exams, I’m reminded of their wandering attention. But you know who can tell you I definitely wasn’t at Graham’s place the morning he died?”

  “Who?”

  “His nosy neighbor. She gave me the evil eye every time I visited. She must have some sort of sensor that tells her the minute I set foot on Graham’s property.”

  “I already asked her,” Mabel said. “She told me she didn’t see anyone that morning.”

  “Then maybe she killed him,” Sandy said, her amusement waning. “Or the cat did. But it definitely wasn’t me. And I don’t know why anyone would think it was.”

  Mabel hesitated. She didn’t particularly want to name any names, not when she couldn’t be absolutely sure Sandy hadn’t killed Graham and wouldn’t go after anyone who’d incriminated her.

  Sandy snorted. “I get it. The nosy neighbor told you Graham and I argued a few times and I raised my voice in frustration. She might even have claimed my words were slurred, but it’s just because I get tongue-tied when I’m angry. I haven’t had a drink in seven years. That woman creates drama out of every little thing. I swear, if you inadvertently drop a scrap of paper on a sidewalk, she tells the cops you dumped toxic waste.”

  Sandy seemed legitimately upset that anyone would consider her a murder suspect. But, Mabel didn’t trust her judgment at the moment. Not when Thomas Porter had seemed so genuine to her, and she’d believed his lies. Her only consolation was that he was apparently a professional liar, since he’d duped other people, too, so it wasn’t entirely her fault that she’d bought his story.

  Mabel decided to give Sandy the benefit of the doubt. Unless something new came along to incriminate her. “I’m sorry I upset you. I’m just worried that the police aren’t doing as much as they could to find Graham’s killer.”

  “We can agree on that much, at least,” Sandy said. “I want to dig into Graham’s data, but I can’t while the murder is actively being investigated. Until there’s an arrest, his heirs won’t be able to dispose of his assets, in case they turn out to have killed him. There are rules against letting killers benefit from murder.”

  Mabel hadn’t thought of that before, but Sandy was right, and the rules would also apply to anyone overseeing the estate, like Rob Robinson, if he was a suspect. If the investigation dragged on long enough, no one would get the plants in time to do anything with them, and all of Graham’s work would be wasted.

  * * * *

  Back at the farmhouse, Mabel went to check on Billie Jean. The food bowl didn’t seem to have been touched at all, which was worrisome given her previous constant appetite. Was it a sign of imminent labor or could it be some sort of illness?

  Mabel tried calling the animal shelter, but got a message that no one could take the call, because they were busy with the animals, so she should leave a message to be returned when someone was available.

  She decided she was probably panicking unnecessarily and hung up. Billie Jean was huddled in the rag-filled box in the far corner, but she’d done that every time Mabel came into the room before, so it didn’t mean anything. If she was still not eating in the morning and hadn’t gone into labor by then, she’d call the animal shelter again and leave a message.

  She’d just closed her aunt’s bedroom door behind her when Pixie announced a visitor to the farm. Mabel went downstairs to see who it was. Parked outside the barn was a little truck—even Mabel wouldn’t have been afraid to drive something that size—that had once been white but now had so much rust, it looked like it had a polka-dotted paint job.

  There was a magnetic sign on the tailgate, presumably covering even more rust, that advertised the solar panel company that Sam Trent worked for. The truck’s bed was so small, she doubted it would actually be useful for installation jobs. The most it could carry was a few toolboxes, not the panels themselves.

  As she watched, Trent climbed out of the truck and was either talking to himself or using a Bluetooth connection with his phone. He paced the short length of the truck and back several times as he talked.

  Mabel would have liked to just ignore the situation and hope Trent would give up and go away. It had worked back in Maine, but it never seemed to work on the farm. Just another reason why Rory and Emily were wrong, and she didn’t belong here.

  Mabel gave Pixie a quick pat as a promise for a treat later on. “Thanks for letting me know about Trent. I wish you could scare off the unwanted visitors instead of just warning me of their arrival.”

  Pixie rubbed her head against Mabel’s hand, asking for more attention.

  “Sorry,” Mabel said. “I’ve got to go chase the unwanted visitor off. Unless you’d like to take on that job from now on?”

  Pixie jumped down from the windowsill and headed out of the kitchen for the front of the house, probably to resume her napping.

  “I guess you’re not interested in becoming a bouncer.” Mabel took a deep breath, preparing herself for the confrontation to come and then left the security and comfort of the farmhouse.

  The closing of the kitchen door caught Trent’s attention. He immediately stopped talking and trotted toward the patio. Mabel hurried forward, preferring not to let him get close enough to wangle an invitation to talk indoors.

  When they met at the edge of the driveway, he said, “I was starting to think you might not be home.”

  “I’m here.” It figured, Mabel thought. She’d reluctantly come to accept that ignoring people wouldn’t work around here, and now she finally found someone who might actually go away if she didn’t acknowledge him. She should have waited longer. “What do you want with me?”

  “Oh, I’m not here to ask you for anything,” he said, with the cheerfulness of a natural sa
lesperson, or perhaps just one who truly believed in his product. “I’m here to give you something.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Mabel said. “I don’t need anything from you, and I don’t like to be indebted to anyone.”

  “You just say that because you don’t know what you’re missing.” Trent urged her over to the truck, where he opened the tailgate to reveal a sample solar panel.

  So she’d been wrong about the tiny truck’s functionality. It could transport panels. One of them anyway. “I’ve seen solar panels before.”

  “Not like this one,” Trent said. “It’s state-of-the-art. Just a few of them could provide all of the farm’s energy needs.”

  “It doesn’t have many energy needs. It’s a low-tech farm.” And that was a significant understatement. She could probably run the place on a handful of batteries. Plus the diesel to run the tractor, of course, but solar panels wouldn’t help there.

  “What about the future though?” Trent asked. “Don’t you want the farm to grow and be more than it is already?”

  She did, but not in ways that would require more electricity. “No. And even if I did, I told you I’m not ready to make any decisions about solar panels.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” she said. “I’m not the best at dealing with people in the best of circumstances, and right now the only energy I need is the kind that would help me to be polite to you while still making you leave. And I don’t think you can supply that. It’s really best if you go away right now.”

  “Or what? You’ll kill me like you did Graham?” Trent laughed, making it clear he was just joking. “I know it’s ridiculous to think you did it, but I’ve got to say it’s worked out well for me. It’s gotten the cops off my case.”

  “Did they tell you I’m a suspect?” The situation was worse than she’d realized if the police were going public with their suspicion of her. She might need to get out of town right away so they couldn’t arrest her before Jeff’s funeral.

  “They didn’t say it in so many words,” Trent said. “But I’m not stupid. The detective spent a lot of time asking me questions about where I was on Monday and just how mad I was with Graham for ruining my marriage. I guess they finally believed me when I said I’d put it all behind me.”

  “But I know you haven’t.” Mabel refrained from adding that, thanks to her, the police also now knew he wasn’t as laid-back as he claimed. “You still think you’d have gotten back with your wife it hadn’t been for Graham.”

  “It was a mutual decision.” He shrugged, but he also looked away as he spoke, unlike how he’d been so eager to make eye contact while he was trying to sell her a solar system. “We weren’t meant to be together for the long term. If we’d really been soul mates, we’d have worked everything out, despite Graham. He just sped up the end a little.”

  “So you didn’t harass her so much that she got a restraining order? Or lose your temper and get violently angry every time you had a setback in your efforts to punish Graham?”

  Trent looked at her again, muscles tightening in his jaw. “Of course not. I’m a good guy.”

  Lots of people thought they were heroes, when they were actually villains. And generally only a bad guy had to go around telling people he was a good guy. Everyone else let their actions speak for themselves.

  “Prove it,” Mabel said. “Tell me where you were when Graham was killed.”

  “I don’t even know when that was.”

  “Early morning. Before nine.”

  “Then I was asleep. Or having breakfast at home. One of the reasons I like my current job better than working for my ex’s family is that I can choose my own hours. And that means not leaving the house before noon most of the time.” Trent patted the solar panel. “So now can we talk business? I really think you’d benefit from a solar system. The house is even oriented in the right direction for easy installation and maximum energy collection.”

  “Now isn’t the right time to discuss it,” Mabel said.

  “But—”

  She cut him off, tired of being ignored when she expressed her wishes. “It’s time for you to leave. I promise to call you if I do decide to install solar panels. But if you come back without me inviting you, I’ll report you for harassment. I’m already working on getting a restraining order against one person. It wouldn’t be all that hard to add you to the process.”

  “All right, all right.” Trent’s tone was light, but he lifted the tailgate and slammed it shut with more force than necessary. “I can take a hint. Call me when you change your mind.”

  “I will.”

  She almost hoped he did come back without an invitation, so she’d have a reason to take out a restraining order against him. The detectives might look at him more closely for Graham’s murder if they found out he was stalking her. But she couldn’t go back to Detective O’Connor until she found some solid evidence implicating Trent or whoever had actually killed Graham. She’d been hoping to find that evidence in the journal, but it hadn’t helped at all so far.

  Still, the journal seemed to be her only hope of identifying Graham’s killer and freeing herself of suspicion so she could go to Jeff Wright’s funeral.

  Chapter 21

  Mabel turned off her phone so she could concentrate on the journal pages. After two hours, with nothing useful turning up, she needed a break.

  She checked on Billie Jean first, who had curled up in the rag-filled box near the crate’s door until Mabel approached, and then jumped out to huddle in the far corner again. The cat seemed fine, although she still wasn’t eating. Mabel refreshed the water bowl and then went to get herself some iced tea, checking her phone on the way. There was a message from someone who’d seen her online ad for the farm.

  Mabel returned the call and listened while the man, who gave his name as Kyle Tellman, told her at length, and without giving her a chance to respond, about his family farm, Tellman Fields, at the other end of Massachusetts, and how he was getting on in age, and the property wasn’t big enough to support two adult sons, and he couldn’t divide it between them, so that meant the younger one would be left without an inheritance, so he was looking for another small farm he could buy for the second son, and her farm sounded perfect for that.

  When Tellman finally ran out of words and gave her an opening to speak, she said, “If you’re serious about it, you’ll have to put the offer in writing so my lawyer can review it.” Only after the words were out did she realize she no longer had a lawyer she really trusted with big decisions like this. Still, the buyer didn’t need to know that.

  He promised to send her a written offer immediately and ended the call.

  Mabel knew she ought to be excited about the possible buyer, but she just felt uncomfortable. She recognized that Tellman was trying to play on her heartstrings with his family saga, but all he’d done was to confuse her. She understood numbers, like the lying developer had relied on, trying to sway her by raising the purchase price. She could test those numbers and then decide whether they worked for her or not. She couldn’t do that with Tellman’s story about his desire to set up both of his sons with their own farms. Was his emotion heartfelt or manufactured? She couldn’t tell, and she no longer had Jeff to do the vetting.

  She could check out the underlying facts at least. She texted Rory and Emily to see if they’d ever heard of Tellman or his farm. Within five minutes, they’d both responded in the negative. Rory had added that the library had an off-line database of small farms in Massachusetts, and she could look him up there.

  Josefina was at the front desk, standing behind a younger woman who looked to be still in high school or perhaps just graduated, who was apparently a new employee or volunteer learning to use the library’s computer.

  Mabel waited until the patron had been helped and then told Josefina what she was looking for.

  “That databa
se is on a different computer and we can’t access it from here.” Josefina turned to the younger woman. “I’m going to the computer room to help Mabel. It’s quiet enough that you should be fine without me, but I won’t be gone long.”

  Josefina walked with surprising speed to the computer room and logged in. Mabel looked over her shoulder, resisting the urge to ask if they could switch places, since she could type so much faster and less painfully. But she knew Josefina wouldn’t appreciate the offer.

  “What was the name again?” Josefina asked.

  Mabel told her, spelling it out, and the librarian slowly keyed it into the search box. The database immediately indicated there were no results.

  “Try Tellman Fields,” Mabel said.

  Again, no results.

  Mabel sighed, and Josefina said, “Wait. There’s a forum for Massachusetts farmers. Maybe someone there knows who he is.”

  “Thanks, but you’re needed at the front desk, and I can do that search at home,” Mabel said.

  Josefina had already finished typing in the URL, and the forum landing page was loading. “It will only take a minute.”

  Mabel watched as the farmer’s name was keyed into the forum’s search box, and this time there was a long list of results.

  “Uh-oh,” Josefina said. “It’s never good when the subject line for the thread includes the word beware. In all caps.”

  “No, it’s not,” Mabel agreed, skimming the thread that Josefina had opened. Apparently Tellman was a well-known conman preying on farmers. He wasn’t a developer, but a grifter abusing the legal system to get money. He would enter into a contract, then play legal games, delaying the sale while recording the purchase and sale agreement at the Registry of Deeds to make it harder to sell the property to someone else, until the seller finally paid him to go away.

  After checking three additional threads along the same lines, Mabel sighed. One person complaining about him might have been a fluke, someone unfairly blaming a buyer for legitimate delays, but there had been at least a dozen people commenting with very similar experiences.