A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die

by Edith Maxwell

  Cam’s relief must have been painted all over her, because Felicity laughed.

  “You don’t need to cook for us, really! We need you to grow food for us. We can do the cooking. Isn’t that right, Wes?” For the first time since Cam had met her, Felicity didn’t look at Wes to confirm her statement.

  Wes didn’t speak.

  “Thanks. Great.” Cam filled the gap. She looked directly at Wes, but his eyes were on Felicity, who had moved on to the produce table. “Everything all right, Wes?” Cam asked in a low voice.

  “Phew,” he said, exhaling. “Life ain’t easy sometimes, Cam.” He shook his head, then took a deep breath. “Nothing a little loving-kindness can’t cure, though.” He moved on to help Felicity assemble their share.

  Cam watched Wes. His touches were subtle but caring, a little stroke to Felicity’s hair, a gentle caress of her shoulder as she selected flowers. Cam’s longing for a man like that struck with a physical jolt to her gut. She had thought she had it in Tom, but in the end had realized she’d been reading caring into his behavior, when it was really only his self-interest pushing through. He’d been sweet enough when he wanted something from her. When she didn’t serve his purposes, he had easily become brusque and distant, both psychologically and physically. In the end, he had rejected her. Claiming it was because she’d moved to the farm had been all so convenient for him.

  Cam shook her head. What was she doing, reliving a failed relationship right here in the barn among a half dozen customers? She told herself to get back to business.

  She approached Wes and Felicity. It looked like they were finished selecting their produce. “Are you picking up fish today, too?”

  Felicity nodded. “Wes grills the cod whole. It’s to die for.”

  Cam flinched. Not again.

  Felicity must have noticed, because she said, “I’m sorry, Cam. That was a stupid thing to say. Forgive me.”

  Cam nodded. “No problem.”

  “What I meant was, it’s totally delicious. The fish is so fresh, it’s just the most tender seafood you’ve ever eaten. Are you getting a share?”

  Cam replied that she was in line in case of a no-show. “Do you have a recipe, Wes?”

  “I’ll e-mail it to you.”

  Cam thanked him. “See you on Volunteer Day, then.” She looked at Felicity.

  “I’ll be here.” Felicity turned to Wes, her face instantly transformed to taskmaster firm. She folded her arms. “Wesley, don’t we have information for Cam?”

  Wes sighed. He gazed at Felicity. “You know I don’t want to get involved.”

  “We don’t have a choice! You can’t just stick your head in the ground like a Yankee ostrich.” Sparks shot out of her eyes.

  “All right.” Wes faced Cam. “That detective was snooping around again. Pappas. He was at our door this morning. I don’t like the authorities on my property. Felicity thinks we should help them. But why help somebody you don’t trust?” He looked around the barn, which for the moment was empty of anyone but the three of them, then focused on his wife. “But I talked to him, anyway. He was asking questions about Lucinda.”

  “Oh, no. But why was he asking you?” Wes didn’t trust the police. Cam wondered why not and hoped it wasn’t because he was part of the militia, too.

  “I suppose because we’re all in the Locavore Club. Felicity and Lucinda were the force that organized it in the first place.”

  “What kind of questions did he ask?”

  “I gathered there might have been an incident last night, after the festival, perhaps.” Wes looked down at Felicity for confirmation. She nodded.

  “Why did you think that?”

  “Pappas asked a lot of questions about when the festival ended, where Lucinda had gone, that kind of thing. But we told him we didn’t know anything. Which is the truth.”

  “Oh, crud.” Cam spied Lucinda at the back door of the barn. She lowered her voice. “Thanks for letting me know. I appreciate it.”

  “Let’s go get our fish, honey,” Felicity said to Wes. Peace apparently reigned again in the Ames-Slavin household.

  “I’ll come along. I need a little fresh air.” All of a sudden the barn, the customers, the murder investigation, the entire farm constricted Cam’s lungs so she could barely breathe.

  At the doorway, Cam glanced back at the farm table. Lucinda stood behind it, one hand neatening the bundles of asparagus. The other gripped her forehead like it hurt, bad.

  Cam inhaled deeply in the sunshine. She leaned against the doorway, watching Bev extract a plastic bag full of an entire fish from the container. She scooped ice from the cooler into another bag, added the fish, and handed it down to Alexandra, who gave it to Wes. Alexandra checked their names off her list and then slid a couple of sheets of paper out from under the list.

  “Here’s an explanation of the fishery practices and a couple of recipes for cooking the fish. Oh, and that Web site there . . .” Alexandra pointed to a spot on the top sheet. “It has a link to a video on how to fillet fish.”

  “Wes already has a filleting knife. Don’t you, dear?” Felicity asked her husband.

  Cam sensed Bev’s eyes on her and glanced up at her standing in the truck. Her hostility was a knife in the air. Cam almost ducked. She hadn’t done anything to deserve that. True, she hadn’t been overly welcoming to Bev—she really should have accepted that rhubarb at the close of market—but she had reached out. Maybe offering to show her the memorial would help.

  “How many more we got?” Bev barked at Alexandra.

  Always serene, Alexandra answered, “Three, Bev.”

  “Well, I need to get going. I have my own farm to see to, you know.”

  Alexandra gazed up at her for a moment, then turned to Cam, extending the clipboard. “How about if I leave you the last three fish in the cooler of ice, along with the list, Cam? Anybody doesn’t claim their fish, it’s yours.”

  “No problem,” Cam agreed. She moved forward to accept the list of subscribers from Alexandra.

  Alexandra turned back to Bev. “All right? Then we’ll be done. I have a few other commitments this afternoon, too.”

  “Let’s be gone, then. I’d rather be with my own kind, anyway.” Bev’s glare this time wasn’t at Cam but beyond her.

  “Just one sec while I pick up my share.” Alexandra grabbed her cloth bags from the cab of the truck and strode into the barn.

  Cam eased around, following Bev’s gaze. Lucinda stood in the entrance to the barn. And her look at Bev was equally unfriendly. Lucinda wasn’t Bev’s “own kind”? What did that mean?

  Cam checked the old clock on the back wall of the barn. Two forty-five. Fifteen minutes until she could be done with today, at least the public part. She looked at the shareholder sign-in sheet. Stuart Wilson was again the only one who hadn’t shown.

  She sank into a lawn chair next to the farm table, the last bunch of asparagus forlorn in its bucket of water, the last of the mesclun looking a little tired at having been pawed through for more than two hours. Cam had been pawed through, too. She slouched, her feet in their muddy work boots extending in front of her, crossed at the ankles.

  The complications of the day elbowed each other for her attention. Wes and Felicity telling her Pappas was curious about where Lucinda had gone last night. Well, where had she gone in such a hurry, right in the middle of the dance? What had happened to pique Pappas’s curiosity? Cam hadn’t gotten a chance to ask Lucinda this morning, and she had left an hour ago, during the busiest pickup time. Bev Montgomery had been so unpleasant to Cam, for no reason she could think of. Alluding to her past with Albert. Glaring at Lucinda and maligning her, really, with that talk about “her own kind.” Cam found thinking about all of it more exhausting than the physical work of farming.

  A sweet whiff of the antique narcissus mixed with the pungent spring garlic and with the smells of the barn: old hay, honest dirt, machine oil, and dust-filtered sunlight. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, folding
her hands over her stomach. Time to just be in the present. Farming was what she’d wanted, after all, complications be damned. Life could be a lot worse.

  At the slamming of a door, her eyes flew open. Stuart dashed into the barn, stopping when he saw her.

  “Sorry. Late again.”

  “No, you’re good.” Cam nodded at the clock, then gestured at the table. “It’s all here for you.”

  “Oh, hey, I forgot my bag. Do you have a couple I can use?”

  Cam rose and dug several plastic grocery bags out of the assortment she kept in a box under the table for just that reason.

  She sat again and watched as Stuart bagged the mesclun. She winced when he loaded heavier items on top of the tender greens in the bag. His hand shook slightly as he extracted the flowers from their water.

  “Looked like you had a good time at the festival last night, dancing and all.” Cam smiled at him.

  Stuart laughed. “Uoh, I’m not too bad at it. I used to go to Cambridge Contra every week. I really get into dancing.”

  Cam raised her eyebrows.

  “My old dad would be turning in his grave if he knew, though. Would have called it a sissy thing to do.”

  “Really?” Cam didn’t dance, but it was because of her uncoordinated, gawky moves when she tried, not because she didn’t believe in it.

  “Yeah, he was military all the way. Didn’t believe in dancing, flowers, none of the finer things in life. Gave my mother grief, I can tell you.”

  “Any idea where your partner lit out to?” Maybe Stuart could tell her about the rest of Lucinda’s evening.

  Stuart hefted the bundle of asparagus for a moment before adding it to his bag. “My partner?”

  “You were dancing with Lucinda. Then, during the big circle dance, she split all of a sudden. I didn’t see her again.”

  He rubbed his hair with one hand, then wiped his forehead. “I don’t know. I stayed for the dance. Well, gotta run.” He didn’t meet Cam’s eyes. He lifted the bag he’d just filled. “Thanks.” Stuart strode out of the barn.

  Cam waved in a wasted gesture. Had he seen Lucinda again after the dance? That was the question she should have asked him. The question he was probably trying to avoid by clearing out like he’d just been called to a fire. And she was pretty sure he wasn’t one of the Westbury on-call firefighters. Well, hey, maybe they’d gone home together. Which was their business, not hers.

  She caught sight of a full bag on the floor and sighed. Looked like half of Stuart’s share was hers now. Shifting in her chair, she felt the object Ellie had given her press into the top of her thigh. She pulled it out of her pocket, wondering why Ellie had wanted to keep it a secret. It looked like a little flashlight. Cam switched it on and aimed it around the barn, but she couldn’t see any light. She turned it to look at the lens but didn’t see light there, either. What the heck was it, and what was it doing on Cam’s farm?

  She walked out to the daylight. She held the object close. The black rubbery case bore a small logo that read PursueTech and what looked like a product code. “IR four-fifty SuCov,” Cam read out. She looked around, as if in another universe the owner would walk up the drive, claim the cylinder, explain why he or she had left it on Cam’s farm, apologize, and leave.

  Since that wasn’t going to happen, it was clearly time for a cold beer, lunch, and the Internet, in that order. She grabbed the one unclaimed fish from the cooler and headed for the house. The Internet would also help with what to do with a whole fish, head and all.

  Chapter 12

  After lunch Cam set to researching the fish first. The plethora of recipes and filleting advice overwhelmed her. She gave up for the moment, wrapped the fish in plastic, and stowed it in the back of the freezer. What she really wanted to do was find out what IR 450 SuCov was.

  Cam surveyed her monitor a few minutes later. She propped her elbows on the desk, chin in both hands. She had found the object on the Internet, all right, but was having trouble getting her mind around it. The IR 450 SuCov was an infrared light. SuCov stood for Super Covert. It was a tool the military, or the paramilitary, for that matter, used with night-vision equipment. According to the description on PursueTech’s Web site, the beam was invisible unless you wore the kind of goggles that worked on that spectrum. And if you did, the device provided high-power illumination.

  Cam looked at the little cylinder next to her keyboard. She reached out a hand and rolled it back and forth. This object, Ellie’s innocent-looking “gadget,” was a tool for sneaking up on people, for spying, for communicating with fellow undercover agents, whoever they were. Ellie had guessed right. Someone had been using it on her property, had dropped it in her woods. She glanced back at the screen. PursueTech was just what it sounded like. The company sold high-tech tools used in pursuit of the enemy. This particular tool cost 160 dollars.

  Cam whistled. The owner had to have bucks to spend so much on a flashlight, and he or she might be part of the Patriotic Militia. But whose light was it? People had been covertly searching her property at night, and she had no idea who or why. Or which enemy they were after. If anyone out there thought Cam was a bad guy, they were seriously misguided.

  But a true bad guy was still out there. It was time to do a stint of armchair sleuthing.

  Half an hour later she’d set up a database of everything she knew relating to Mike’s murder. She examined the rows and columns. People who knew Mike. Other farmers who might be feeling the stress of competition with Cam’s product. People who might be connected with the Patriotic Militia. Immigrants like Lucinda. People Great-Uncle Albert knew. Time of day Cam had seen any of the players or knew where they had been. Even all the subscribers. But finding a connection between motive, victim, and perpetrator seemed impossible.

  What had she missed? Well, alibis for Saturday late afternoon, but that was the domain of the police.

  Preston reared up on his hind legs to rub his head against her knee. As Cam scratched his brow, she said, “Mr. P, this is getting me nowhere. I don’t know who disliked Mike. I have no idea who this shadowy militia is. The farmers I’m in competition with aren’t mean or violent, as far as I know. Uncle Albert couldn’t have had any enemies. What else should I be thinking of?”

  When Preston didn’t answer, Cam decided to hack together a Python utility script to dig through all the data and display it graphically in a Web page. Twenty minutes later, she narrowed her eyes at a flowchart with colored lines connecting names, times, and relationships.

  But software didn’t do any good if it didn’t have data to work with in the first place. And she’d never encountered a software engineer who could predict how someone would act under X amount of stress or Y amount of pressure. Just for the heck of it, she poked around on the Internet, trying to find psychological predictive software. She finally came up with a document called the DSM-V, which looked like it was a catalog of all mental disorders. It was searchable, but it wasn’t what she needed.

  Preston mewed in his tiny voice and rubbed her knee again.

  Cam drained the last bit from her glass and saved her work. The next time she picked up a bit of information, she could always enter it into the database and regenerate the display.

  She checked her e-mail. She opened a message from Lucinda, asking if Cam wanted to join her at the free outdoor concert in Newburyport that evening. Lucinda wrote that they could bring food and wine and have a picnic supper. Cam looked at the time. She stretched and thought about sitting home alone versus being out in public and having to be social. The former was definitely her path of least resistance. The latter? Sometimes one was called to a higher purpose. She fired off a reply and headed for the shower, plotting how she could delve deeper into Lucinda’s secrets, and maybe somehow into the secret of Mike Montgomery’s death.

  Cam scanned the crowd. Families sprawled on picnic blankets on the grass between the Firehouse Center for the Arts and the river. Near the temporary stage, a contingent of senior citizens waited expect
antly in fabric lawn chairs. A young couple stretched out on their sides on a cloth, the man feeding the woman morsels of dinner. Two boys dashed by Cam, nearly clipping her as she searched for Lucinda. She saw a familiar hand waving from the slight rise on the right and headed that way.

  “You snagged a nice spot,” Cam said when she arrived. The hillock afforded a better view of the stage and of the wide Merrimack beyond. Lucinda sat on an Indian-print bedspread.

  She greeted Cam. “Sit down. Plenty of room.”

  Cam set her basket down and sat cross-legged next to Lucinda. “Thanks for asking me, Lucinda. I was all set for another Saturday night at home alone.”

  “This band is good. I know the drummer. He’s Brazilian.”

  “What kind of music do they play?”

  “Cajun. Fun stuff.” Lucinda stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned back on one elbow.

  Cam extracted a chilled bottle of white wine from Jewell Towne Vineyards, two plastic cups, and an opener from her basket. “Wine? It’s from just over the border in New Hampshire.” At Lucinda’s nod, she opened the bottle and poured for each of them.

  “Saúde.” Lucinda extended her cup toward Cam’s. “Cheers.”

  Cam returned the salutation and sipped the wine. It went down cool and easy. A breeze cooled the air, too, this close to the water. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  A high-pitched sound blasted. Cam winced and opened her eyes again. Down on the stage the band was setting up and testing amplifiers.

  Lucinda drew several containers out of her bag, as well as a couple of plastic plates and forks. “Hungry?”

  Cam nodded. “I brought green salad. That’s all I have that’s local yet.”

  “Good. I made tabbouleh. Got cracked wheat from the grain guy at the festival and used goat cheese from that farm in Topsfield and your mint.” She leaned close to Cam and whispered, “I cheated on the olive oil. Don’t tell.” Lucinda sat back and laughed.

  “Listen, I don’t care if you cheat or not.” Cam proffered her salad. “The few fine things in life we can’t produce here? I’d cheat, too, if it meant I couldn’t have coffee, chocolate, or olive oil.”