Chapter 4
It hadn’t been Mike’s pesticide. The jug still sat in the barrel in the barn when she checked, and it felt as full as when she’d tossed it.
Cam washed up in the house and changed into a green flowered cotton sundress and flat sandals to go into town. She told herself the butterflies in her stomach couldn’t possibly have to do with seeing Jake. She checked her appearance in the tall mirror. She wanted to look nice but didn’t want to appear as if she had dressed up for her strawberry delivery. She smoothed an errant tuft of hair. A fashion plate she wasn’t, but it was a big step up from her usual outfit.
Downstairs, the mid-afternoon sun filtered through bright green leaves outside before it washed the room with light, a sight that normally cheered Cam. Between a murder, the reporters, and crop sabotage, though, sunlight didn’t have a chance. She looked at the telephone. She really should call the organic inspector and tell him about the rhubarb. But it had to be an isolated incident, and she hadn’t found any other forbidden substance in the barn. That bed wasn’t near any of the fields. Her organic certification was still in progress. If she reported a chemical on a crop, well, that could totally derail things. On the other hand, if she’d been filmed with the destroyed crop behind her, the inspector might be calling her after the evening newscast.
Cam frowned and then worried about adding frown lines to her face. She exited the house, careful to lock the back door. She ignored the calls from the street as she made her way to the barn. She laid the baskets of berries in the bed of the truck and covered them with a clean cloth, securing it with elastic cords. She turned Great-Uncle Albert’s old vehicle around and drove down the driveway as fast as was safe. As she approached the clump of newspeople that included her persistent reporter, she leaned on the horn. Her heart raced. She really didn’t want to hit anyone. And she really didn’t want to talk to any of them, either.
The group scattered, leaving Cam scarcely enough room to turn onto the road. She gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. This was crazy. She hoped they weren’t going to follow her.
She headed down to the wide Merrimack River and along its banks until she arrived in coastal Newburyport. Federalist mansions lined the main street, large houses that had belonged to sea captains, with widow’s walks atop every roof. As she drove, Cam again saw the poisoned rhubarb. Who could have done it? More important, who would have done it, and why? Mike said he hadn’t used the pesticide yet. Maybe the killer did that to her crop. Maybe Mike caught the person and was killed because of that. The problem with all these scenarios was the same. Cam had no idea of the motivation. Why ruin her crop? Why kill Mike?
Cam turned down a side street lined with smaller old homes built right on the road. Their age showed most around the window frames, which were no longer squared, and in the many times repainted clapboards. Tiny tidy gardens peeked out from the sides or backs of the homes.
Cam, her heart rate finally back to normal, parked behind The Market. She carried the baskets to the rear door of the restaurant, set them down, and pressed the bell until the door opened.
“Hi, Jake. Berry delivery.”
The chef smiled as he took the baskets. He leaned down to kiss her cheek. He smelled of shampoo, citrus, garlic, and a trace of male sweat.
A zing raced through Cam. She could get used to this.
He stood upright, tossing hair from his eyes as he led the way into the kitchen, setting the baskets on a counter. “You look nice, Farmer Flaherty. How you can go from the field to the fashion page, I shall never know.”
“Just be quiet,” she said lightly, trying not to smile.
Jake sampled a berry. “Heavenly.” He rolled his eyes and enfolded Cam in a bear hug.
Cam flushed at the delicious feel of her face against the shoulder of this solid white-clad man but said, “Let me go, Lurch!” And then wanted to bite her tongue. Calling someone the name of a monstrous TV character remembered from her childhood wasn’t very complimentary. With any luck the Swede wouldn’t know the reference.
He let go. “My customers will adore you in perpetuity. They will grovel at your doorstep. But no rhubarb to go with the strawberries?”
Cam’s smile vanished.
“What is it, Cam? What’s troubling you?” Jake put a hand on her shoulder.
Cam shook her head as she dropped her bag on the floor, pulled a tall metal stool next to a stainless-steel island, and perched on it. The fragrant kitchen was quiet now between the lunch and dinner rushes. Piles of chopped leeks and a bowl of scrubbed potatoes in water sat on the broad counter nearby. A young man in white chef’s garb chopped tomatoes. Several large pots simmered on a ten-burner stove behind him. Cam tried not to look at the flames.
“Come on now. Tell me what’s worrying you,” said Jake as he emptied a big bag of lettuce and greens into a sink and ran cold water to cool and wash them. He looked over at her from under bushy eyebrows, his hands busy in the deep sink. “Tell, tell.”
Cam slouched, with her elbows on the island. “I guess you haven’t seen the news. There was a murder on my property last night.”
“Murder? You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m not kidding. My employee, I mean, the employee I had fired at noon, was the unlucky recipient of a pitchfork in his neck. My pitchfork.”
“Who found him?” Jake looked at Cam.
She pointed at her chest.
“You poor thing. Did they catch the killer?”
“Not yet. The police weren’t even around today. I don’t understand it. Oh, and I found herbicide on my rhubarb.”
“No problem. We’ll wash it off, and it’ll still make great pie. And, you know, compared to murder—”
“You don’t understand. The whole crop is ruined. I don’t know how it could have happened.”
“So you overapplied it, big deal. What’s the fuss? Won’t it grow back?”
“Jake, listen to me. It was real herbicide, not a product I can or would use. I don’t even have any on the property.” Or won’t once the trash gets picked up, Cam thought. “It wasn’t my mistake. Couldn’t have been. And I could be decertified.”
“I see.”
Cam looked down at her hands. The skin was rough, and dirt still lingered under her fingernails. Jake was a chef. His hands were always clean. She smoothed the skirt of her dress several times, shoved her fists into the wide front pockets, reconsidered, then clasped one hand with the other in her lap.
“You know, my customers and me, we don’t care if you’re certified or not. We don’t care if someone is killed on your property—well, as long as you didn’t do it.” Jake laughed as he raised his eyebrows Groucho-style. “We love your vegetables. But I’ll help you locate the scoundrel and his reasons. We will talk him out of this lunatic behavior and settle the matter like civilized people.” He loaded the greens into an industrial-size salad spinner and began to rotate the top to dry the leaves. “And I’m sure the police will catch the killer any minute now.”
“Sounds good to me,” Cam breathed and tried to believe him. She leaned down to get her purse and then rose. “I’m going to take myself for a walk. I’ll be back to eat at about five o’clock. That’s not too early to sample your best cooking?” After Cam had met Jake earlier in the spring, she had started a ritual on Sundays of treating herself to his cooking. She never minded eating alone, and she had brought the latest Michael Pollan to read.
Jake shook his head. “See you in a few.” He walked her to the doorway. He smiled, but his eyes were sober.
Cam focused on her computer screen the next morning. She had much work to do in the fields, but the message on her voice mail last night had said George Frost was coming by to talk with her this morning at nine, so she was catching up on record keeping, marketing tasks, and paying bills. After searching everywhere for small-farm management software and finding either nothing satisfactory or nothing affordable, Cam had written her own. It let her track what she planted and when, as well as costs, the weathe
r, harvest yields, soil tests, business associates, barter-based sales, the works. It was a simple app, but it did the job, or it would when she got everything transferred over from the paper ledger system Albert had used. Maybe she should market it to other small farmers. One more thing to add to the to-do list. But more cash income couldn’t hurt, so it would be worth the effort of improving the user interface and making it easier to navigate. She’d work on that in the quiet winter months.
Frost was late. Glancing out the window, Cam was glad the reporters weren’t back. They’d been gone when she arrived home last night. It was a relief, but it made her wonder if they had information she didn’t.
Returning to the computer, Cam clicked the SUBMIT button in the Harvest-to-Hand window. There, now Produce Plus Plus would be one of the farms listed on their mobile app. What would Great-Aunt Marie have thought about people looking up sources for local food on their cell phones? She probably would have chided Cam for not registering on the site earlier. Marie had always been ahead of her time.
Cam set up a link in the app to the farm’s brand-new Facebook page. And hoped she could find time to keep up with all this publicity and marketing, when she really just wanted to grow food. She needed a Web page, too. Cam sighed, then had a thought. Why not get a CSA volunteer to set up the Web page? Brilliant.
She picked up a letter sitting on the desk. She’d almost been late with her last home owner’s insurance payment. She logged into the company’s Web site and set up automatic online payments, groaning at the amount. She squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them, but the monthly charge hadn’t magically reduced itself. Well, she had to have insurance, and that was that.
Three short raps brought her back to the present. She strode to the door and flung it open.
George Frost faced her. Behind him stood another man.
“Morning, Ms. Flaherty. This is Pete Pappas with the state police.”
State police? What was up with that? Cam looked from one man to the other.
“May we come in?”
“Sure.” She held the door open for them. “But why are the state police involved?” She gestured at the table and pulled out a chair for herself.
Frost sat across from her, and Pappas, a diminutive man in an immaculate blazer and slacks, stood for a moment, looking around the room, before he sat with an air of reluctance. Preston sidled up to Chief Frost and snagged a couple of strokes, but when Pappas stretched his hand toward the cat, the cat twisted away and stalked off.
“When a murder occurs in a small town like Westbury, protocol calls for a state investigator to participate,” Pappas said. “We have resources the local towns don’t.”
George Frost nodded but didn’t look particularly pleased with the situation.
“I thought you would have been here yesterday,” Cam said. “Don’t you have to look for evidence?”
“We were here yesterday afternoon. You were out,” Frost said. “We had several emergencies yesterday morning, not the least of which was a case of arson. Our fire department barely got a couple of children out.”
Cam froze. Children in a burning house. She could almost smell the smoke.
Frost brought her back to reality. “We talked with several of your CSA customers. You stated on Saturday evening you had not had a fight with Mike Montgomery, correct?”
Cam nodded.
“A Mr. Ames and a Ms. Slavin remember it differently.”
Felicity and Wes. Great.
Chief Frost continued. “According to them, Mike Montgomery threatened you.”
“He was unhappy I fired him. I wouldn’t call it a threat, though.”
Pete Pappas raised his thick black eyebrows but didn’t speak.
“They also mentioned a Lucinda who was there. We’ll need her contact information.”
“Sure. She’s the president of the Locavore Club.”
Finally Pappas spoke. “The what?”
“It’s a group of people who like to eat locally grown food. Many of them are my customers.”
Pappas rolled his eyes.
“If they want to buy my produce, it’s fine with me.”
“Let’s have contact info for Lucinda, uh . . . What’s her last name?”
“DaSilva. Capital D, capital S,” Cam said to Chief Frost, who had pulled out a small notebook. Cam rose and moved to her desk. “I’ll get it off my customer list.”
“I’d like you to print out the entire list for me,” Pappas said. “It’s possible one of your customers saw or heard something relating to the crime.”
Cam sighed. “All right.” She sent the file to her printer.
“And we’ll need you to come down to the Westbury station to take your prints,” Frost said.
Cam stood. “Why? I didn’t kill Mike.”
“Purposes of elimination,” Pappas said with a little smile.
“But he was killed with my pitchfork. My fingerprints are going to be all over it.”
“We done here, George?” Pappas stood and drummed his fingers on the table.
Chief Frost nodded as he unfolded from his chair. “You’ll be around, Ms. Flaherty, correct?”
“Of course I’ll be around. I have a farm to run!” Cam heard the screech in her voice with horror. She cleared her throat and tried to calm herself. It wouldn’t do to be antagonistic with men like this. “When do you need my fingerprints? Oh, never mind. I’ll go down there in a few minutes.” Might as well get it over with.
The men headed for the door. Preston appeared from nowhere and ambled toward them. Pappas paused. As he leaned down to pet the cat, Preston gave him a look and shot straight back where he’d come from.
“Oh, by the way,” Cam called, “I need to get into my hoop house. I have seedlings that need my care, and . . .”
George Frost turned. “We took the tape down yesterday. You’re free to go in and out now.”
“But if you find anything we missed, you tell us.” Pappas focused on Cam. “Anything at all. Do you understand?”
His arrogant tone rubbed Cam the wrong way.
“You don’t touch it,” he went on. “You don’t tell anyone else. You call me. Here’s my card.” He pulled a business card out of his jacket pocket and proffered it.
“You can call me at the station, too,” Chief Frost added with a rush, earning him a cold glance from Pappas.
Cam pasted a little smile on her face and nodded, glancing over at the kitchen counter. She’d forgotten until this minute about the disk she’d found the morning before. And now she thought she might hang on to it for a little while longer. She’d give it to Ruth. She trusted Ruth.
After she watched their cruiser pull onto the road, Cam trained a flashlight on the disk but couldn’t see any identifying marks. She used the tip of a knife to flip it over and examined it again. It was dim and scratched, but the face and hat almost looked like the New England Patriots’ logo. The letters PM were superimposed on the shape. Cam shook her head. She didn’t know what it was. It could have been Mike’s. It could have been the killer’s. Or it could have belonged to any number of other people who had traipsed through the hoop house over the years, including Great-Uncle Albert.
When she got home from the station, Cam called Nick’s.
After a brief conversation, she said, “What do you mean you don’t have time to fix my tiller?”
“Lady, it’s June. We got broken lawn mowers out the wazoo. I told you I can fix it next week.”
Cam winced at the click and the subsequent dial tone. She pulled a book off the shelf where she kept gardening and home improvement tomes and trudged to the barn.
“I’m smart. I should be able to figure this out. Right, Preston?”
Preston answered by rearing up and rubbing his side along her leg.
Sunlight streamed through the clerestory window above the barn’s back door. Cam had found the wide window at a salvage shop last fall and had installed it to add more natural illumination to the barn.
She sat cross-legged on the floor next to the tiller and opened The Idiot’s Guide to Small Engine Repair. She wasn’t usually an idiot, unless you counted social interactions, but when it came to rototillers, she was a dunce.
A few minutes later, Cam rummaged in Albert’s toolbox for a socket wrench. She found one, as well as a socket. She pulled the little hood off the spark plug and tried to unscrew it. The socket spun around the white bolt-shaped base of the plug. Off she went to find a smaller one, which, of course, was too small.
“Just call me Goldilocks. This one has to be just right,” she muttered to herself after selecting a third socket from the tattered bag where Albert had stored them. Cam extracted the plug after exerting pressure on the wrench. She carried it out the open door and examined it in the sunlight. Exactly like the book predicted, the business end was coated in black oil. She pulled a rag out of her pocket and wiped the plug clean as she walked back in. A thin file from the toolbox was the next weapon in the process. She slid it into the gap between the electrode set in its ceramic base and the bent-over hook of metal. She sanded a deposit off the metal. She didn’t have a way of measuring the gap and hoped it hadn’t changed from the last tune-up, which had to have been a decade or more ago.
Cam reassembled the works and checked the levers. She crossed her mental fingers and pulled. The machine coughed and almost caught, then died. She tried it again. It started.
Cam screeched as the tiller bucked toward her and knocked her to the ground. Her hands flew off the handlebars, and the tiller shut off.
“Crud. I left it in reverse.” She got up and dusted herself off. “At least it started, right, Mr. P?” She rubbed her left hip where she had landed hard, then winced. The rubbing had opened the cut on her hand. Blood oozed through the bandage.
Preston eyed her from the doorway in a stance that said he was watchful for additional crazy machines.
That afternoon, Cam pushed up from the ground. She dusted the dirt from her knees and checked the height of the sun. She didn’t wear a watch in the fields but figured it had to be close to three o’clock. A breeze smelling of rain rustled the leaves in the tall trees at the back of the property. She dumped the bucket of weeds on top of the others in the garden cart. She’d been pulling them since lunchtime, but at least the lettuces had clean beds now. They didn’t take well to the competition of weeds like purslane and dock.
A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die Page 4
