Berried Secrets

by Peg Cochran

  “Just tell me what to do. It feels as if the temperature has dropped just while I’ve been walking here.”

  “Remember I showed you where the sensors are in each of the bogs?”

  Monica nodded, hoping she’d be able to find them in the dark.

  “Just check the temps on the three bogs that haven’t been harvested yet, then call me with the numbers. I’ll turn on the sprinklers if they’re needed.” He gave a wan smile. “And be sure to get out of the way first. I don’t want you getting soaked.”

  Monica shivered at the thought. Her teeth were already on the verge of chattering.

  She headed in the direction Jeff had indicated, down a path with the bog on one side and the irrigation ditch on the other. Even with her lantern, it was rough going. A thick cloud had obscured the moon, and although it was slowly drifting past, it would be a while before it had moved enough for the moonlight to shine through and light the way.

  Monica tripped on a tangled root that was embedded in the dirt and forcing its way to the surface. She thought she was going to go down but caught herself in time. She bit her lip. She would so much rather be back at her cozy cottage, tucked up warm in bed clutching her hot water bottle. But, she reminded herself, if Jeff didn’t get the berries protected they would freeze, which would turn them mushy and worthless. Sassamanash Farm was already in debt enough as it was. They needed every single berry from this year’s crop to survive.

  The moon peeked out for a brief moment and shone on the murky waters of the irrigation ditch to Monica’s right. Water on the farm was used and reused—moved from one bog to another through a series of canals that depended on rainwater for replenishment. It was very important to protect the wetlands that the farm stood on, as well as the adjacent water sources—several small lakes and ponds that bordered the farm.

  The thick cloud covering the moon shifted again and light shone on the path, but then it was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared. Monica thought she heard a noise behind her, and she whirled around. She felt slightly foolish. The dark night, the oily waters of the irrigation ditch and the black hole of the bog were working overtime on her imagination. She had walked the streets of Chicago alone late at night plenty of times with only the sound of her own footsteps for company. But this was different. In Chicago there had been street lamps every few feet to illuminate the sidewalk, the occasional group of tipsy people spilling out of the bars just before closing and the odd store owner pulling down the metal grate over his window for the night. Here she was truly all alone.

  She reminded herself that there was nothing to be frightened of. No wild, predatory animals roamed the farm, nor were there any serial killers on the loose and certainly not any boogeymen. Of course there was a murderer at large in Cranberry Cove, but whoever it was was unlikely to be out at the farm on such an inhospitable evening. Given her druthers, Monica would certainly have been tucked up in bed herself instead of out in the cold searching for a temperature sensor.

  Silence descended again, and she assumed the noise had been a figment of her imagination. She slowed her steps—she thought she was approaching the area where she would find the first sensor. She was about to head into the bog when there was another noise.

  Before Monica could even spin around to determine the source of the sound, a searing pain shot through her head and blackness darker than any night she had ever experienced enveloped her.

  • • •

  Monica heard someone frantically calling her name, but it seemed to be coming from a long distance away. It was far more tempting to settle back into the warm, delicious oblivion that was calling her, beckoning her like the sirens beckoned Odysseus. Someone shook her by the shoulders, and she wanted to tell them to stop—that she preferred to return to that state of unconsciousness that had been deeper and more satisfying than sleep.

  But whoever it was would not give up, and eventually Monica roused, breaking through to reality like a swimmer breaking through the surface of the water.

  “What?” she mumbled. Her lips felt thick and were difficult to move.

  “Are you alright?” Jeff was leaning over her, his face creased with concern.

  “Of course,” Monica said, half of her still in the dreamlike state that had been caused by the blow to her head.

  She stretched out an arm and was surprised to find herself lying on the ground. “What am I doing here?” she asked as she rubbed a hand across her forehead.

  “I don’t know.” Jeff frowned. “Did you fall?”

  “I don’t think so.” Monica tried to think, but everything was enveloped in a thick fog. What else could have happened? “I guess I must have.” She ran a hand through her hair and was shocked to discover a huge bump on her head.

  “No!” she blurted out suddenly. “I heard a noise behind me and the next thing I knew there was a terrible pain in my head.” She rubbed the sore spot again and her hand came away with blood on it. “There’s a big lump.”

  “Where is it?” Jeff held out his hand, and Monica grasped it and guided it toward the goose egg rising from the crown of her head.

  Jeff snatched his hand back. “You didn’t fall.” His expression was grim. “Someone hit you over the head.”

  Monica struggled to prop herself up on her elbows. The damp was slowly penetrating her jacket, sweater and turtleneck, and she could feel her teeth beginning to chatter.

  “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

  “No! I’ll be fine. We need to see to the cranberries.”

  “The cranberries aren’t important,” Jeff said shaking his head. “You are.”

  “I’m fine,” Monica insisted. “Go check the temperature in the bog and then do what you have to do. I’ll head back to the cottage.”

  She began to struggle to her feet.

  Jeff hesitated.

  “Go on!”

  He stuck out a hand and pulled Monica to her feet. She swayed briefly. Jeff still didn’t move, and Monica gave him a gentle shove. He nodded curtly and plunged into the bog.

  As Monica made her unsteady way back home she heard the hiss of the sprinklers coming on. She crossed her fingers. Hopefully Jeff had been in time to save the last of the crop.

  By the time Monica reached her cottage, her head was pounding. She went into the tiny powder room off the kitchen and flicked on the light. She was shocked when she saw that blood had trickled down the right side of her face and was matted in her hair.

  She opened the medicine chest, shook two ibuprofen out of the bottle and went into the kitchen for a glass of water.

  She was swallowing the two pills when a thought occurred to her. The night Culbert was killed, Jeff had said there’d been a frost scare. Monica remembered him saying how tired he was because he’d been out checking the sensors. He could have easily lured Culbert to the farm somehow and then hit him over the head. And who else knew she would be out alone tonight . . . ? Monica shook herself. The blow to her head was obviously affecting her thinking. Jeff wouldn’t harm her, and as mad as he’d been at Culbert, he wouldn’t have harmed him, either.

  Monica had just sat down at the kitchen table when the back door opened and Jeff walked in. He had his cell phone in his hand.

  “I’ve called the police.”

  “What? Why?” Monica half rose from her seat.

  “Someone tried to hurt you. They hit you over the head and could have killed you. If you had fallen unconscious into the irrigation ditch . . .” The unspoken words hung in the air between them.

  “If I was attacked, do you think it’s related to Culbert’s murder?” Monica watched as Jeff retrieved a bag of frozen vegetables from her freezer.

  “Here. Put this on your head.” He handed her the bag of peas. “You’ve been going around asking questions. Someone saw or heard you and got spooked. They wanted to be sure you couldn’t do any more snooping.�
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  “But how would they know I’d be out on the farm at one o’clock in the morning instead of in bed where any sane person would be?”

  “I don’t know. Either they were here for some reason—to break into the farm store or steal equipment maybe—and it was just their luck to find you wandering alone in the dark. Or,” Jeff opened a cupboard and got out two mugs, “they knew that with a frost in the forecast, we’d have to turn on the sprinklers. And maybe they took their chances that you would be out helping me.”

  Monica shifted the bag of peas on her head. “That would seem to argue that Mauricio is behind this. He would know about the frost, and he can probably find his way around the farm in the dark better than I can.”

  Jeff filled the mugs with water, placed them in the microwave and stood with his back against the counter. While they waited for the water to heat, Monica told him about Cora.

  “I can understand why Mauricio might have wanted to kill Culbert, but Cora?”

  “Maybe there’s a connection we don’t know about.”

  Jeff was retrieving tea bags from the cupboard when there was a brisk knock on the door. He pulled it open.

  Detective Stevens stood on the doorstep. Her hair was rumpled and she was wearing a pair of sweats with a corduroy jacket open over them.

  “Sorry to get you out so late,” Monica said.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Stevens ran a hand over her belly. “I might as well get used to being woken up in the middle of the night.”

  “Tea?” Jeff was already reaching for another mug.

  “Sure. A little caffeine shouldn’t hurt.” Stevens plopped into one of Monica’s kitchen chairs with a sigh.

  “Is this your first?” Monica took the mug Jeff handed her.

  “Yes. And something of a surprise. My husband and I thought we were too old, but obviously Mother Nature didn’t think so.” She ran her hand through her hair. “My first husband and I never had any kids, which was fortunate. He was the reason why I joined the force. I saw firsthand how too many cops ignored domestic violence. I hoped I could change that.”

  Monica didn’t know what to say. She took a sip of her tea and winced when the scalding liquid hit her tongue.

  “So.” Stevens pulled a small notebook from the pocket of her jacket. Suddenly she was all business. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  Monica told her about hearing a noise and then being hit over the head. Her hand went to the bump on her skull.

  Stevens looked up from her pad, a puzzled look on her face. “What were you doing out on the farm in the middle of the night?”

  “That’s easy.” Jeff jumped in to answer the question. He explained about the frost and the need to check the temperature in the bogs.

  Stevens looked up at Monica. “And you’re sure you didn’t get dizzy or trip and fall and bang your head? Then, when you came to, you couldn’t remember what happened and jumped to the conclusion that you had been attacked?”

  Monica stiffened. “No. I’m positive. Someone hit me on the head.” She snapped her fingers. “I remember something else. As I was walking to meet Jeff by the pump house, I saw a light. Just a brief glint, and I thought it was coming from the moon, but maybe it was coming from the road. It might have been someone’s headlights penetrating the thick cover of trees.”

  Stevens nodded and made a note but didn’t say anything.

  “It seems obvious to me that this is somehow connected to Culbert’s murder, don’t you think?” Jeff paced the small room with his hands behind his back.

  “What about Cora?” Monica looked at Stevens.

  Stevens scrubbed a hand across her eyes, then stifled a yawn. “The ME did the preliminary autopsy. Of course, the toxicology reports won’t be back for a while yet. If they keep cutting the budget and laying people off, there won’t be anyone left to run the tests.” Stevens sighed. “But I called in a favor, and hopefully we’ll be moved to the top of the list. The ME has ruled out the obvious—heart attack, stroke, aneurysm, cancer . . . along with stab wounds, gunshot wounds, strangling, drowning, asphyxiation and the like. It seems that Cora was a reasonably healthy middle-aged woman, and there was no cause for her to drop dead while sitting in her own living room. Of course, until the tox reports come back, we can’t rule out poisoning. The ME did find a needle mark on her right bicep. Just the one, so I think we can safely assume she wasn’t a junkie. Besides, my guys searched that trailer from top to bottom and didn’t find any evidence that she was a user. She’d probably just gotten a flu shot. It’s that time of year.” Stevens stifled another yawn. “Of course they didn’t find any other useful evidence, either.”

  Monica frowned. “That certainly is strange.”

  Stevens nodded in agreement. “It’s a real puzzler, that’s for sure.”

  Chapter 15

  Monica was surprised when she glanced at her alarm clock and saw that it was already past eight o’clock. She was about to leap out of bed when she remembered it was Sunday. She sank back against her pillows and pulled the comforter up to her chin. Her bed felt warm and delicious, and she decided to indulge herself for a few minutes. She was used to rising before dawn. While she’d been running her café, she would get the first batch of muffins or scones in the oven by four thirty a.m., and now at Sassamanash Farm, she had to get an early start on making the salsa and the fresh-baked goods for the store.

  Monica ran a hand through her hair and winced. Why was her head so sore? Almost immediately the events of the previous evening came flooding back. The pitch-black night, her flashlight creating only a narrow band of light ahead of her, the noise she thought she heard . . . then nothing. Monica touched the spot again—more gingerly this time. The lump was still there, but it was smaller than it had been. She was grateful that she didn’t have a headache to go along with it.

  Jeff had been concerned that she might have suffered a concussion and had wanted to spend the night on her sofa so he could check on her every hour, but Monica had convinced him to go back to his apartment. She was grateful because the thought of being woken up every hour and asked what day it was or who the president was had been decidedly unappealing.

  Ten minutes later, Monica realized she was bored with lying in bed and she reached for her robe and slippers and padded down to the kitchen. She got the coffee going and pulled open the back door to retrieve the Sunday paper from the mat where the paperboy had tossed it. She shivered as the icy wind blasted her in the face. She glanced at the sky. The clouds were moving swiftly, buffeted by the strong breeze, and there was a sliver of blue visible to the west. Hopefully that was the portent of a sunny day.

  Monica dropped the newspaper onto the table. She poured herself a cup of coffee, popped a cranberry muffin in the toaster oven to warm it and sat down at her kitchen table.

  The paper was still cold to the touch as she flipped through the various sections. As usual, the Sunday edition was full of circulars. Monica was about to toss them aside when her eye caught the one for Fresh Gourmet, a national chain grocery store just outside of town that featured a lot of organic products, healthy frozen food items and hard-to-find ingredients.

  Monica paged through the insert. Lamb from New Zealand, coffee beans from Tanzania—Monica nearly gasped at the price—smoked salmon flown in daily from Scotland and other items she couldn’t afford. She was about to toss the section in the recycling when a thought occurred to her. Why shouldn’t Fresh Gourmet carry Sassamanash cranberry salsa? If it was good enough for the Cranberry Cove Inn, then wouldn’t it be good enough for Fresh Gourmet?

  Her laptop was already open on the table. Monica pushed the papers and the remains of her breakfast to one side, and pulled the computer closer. She quickly found the website for Fresh Gourmet. Her mouse hovered over the bottom of the screen until she found the link for vendors. She clicked on it and brought up the relevant page.

 
If Fresh Gourmet agreed to carry the farm’s salsa, it would be a source of revenue year round. They could add on to the screening house and build a kitchen. Monica imagined they would need all the appropriate permits as well as be ready to pass health inspections in order to produce the salsa in greater quantities.

  She read through the information on the Fresh Gourmet website—the first step was to submit an application to the regional office. Monica was dismayed by the length and breadth of the information required—packaging, labeling, market research and more. First she would have to make sure that the farm’s product was right for the store. If they already sold a number of homemade salsas, then they would most likely not be interested in hers. As soon as she was dressed, she’d take a drive to the nearest Fresh Gourmet and scope it out. And she’d pick up something for dinner—assuming she could afford anything more than a can of corned beef hash.

  Monica pulled on a fresh pair of jeans, a sweater and then, thinking of her destination, added a decorative scarf to her outfit. She looked in the mirror. She wasn’t ready for the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, but she thought she looked good enough for Fresh Gourmet.

  Beach Hollow Road was deserted as Monica drove through town, although the parking lot of St. Andrew’s was full. The church bells began to peal as she drove past, and she saw a couple walking arm-in-arm scurry through the doors just as they were being closed.

  Monica felt guilty about not being in church. She vowed that the following weekend she would be in the front pew at St. Andrew’s. But right now she was on a mission to save Sassamanash Farm, and she hoped God would be okay with that.

  Fresh Gourmet was located in a strip mall about five miles outside of Cranberry Cove. A green-and-white striped awning hung over the entrance and two huge terra-cotta pots holding ficus trees flanked the door. Like the shops on Beach Hollow Road, the store was most crowded in the summertime and on weekends, but it was a popular chain and people were willing to drive down from Grand Rapids to frequent it. Despite it being Sunday morning, there were already a dozen cars in the parking lot.