Red Hot Deadly Peppers

by Paige Shelton

  “And you killed your uncle, too?” I said. I still wasn’t scared. I was not yet ready to believe what I was hearing.

  “Sure. I suffocated him. I knew tradition would dictate that he be buried quickly.”

  “But you pushed Harry and the police to look into his death.”

  “I did. Isn’t that what a concerned relative should do? I knew nothing would ever come of it.”

  “Nera,” Harry said with deep disappointment.

  “How’d you figure this out?” she asked him.

  I didn’t think Harry would share what he knew, but he must have realized either that it didn’t matter now anyway or that talking would forestall any shooting.

  “When Becca said Graham’s eyes were shut tight, I suspected anaphylactic shock, and I knew about his allergy, but I waited until the ME figured out the COD. I knew he’d figure it out quickly if it was anaphylaxis. Graham hadn’t been home—you walked me through his house and told me as much. You were his only family, Nera. He’d been showing up at work, and I knew he didn’t have a girlfriend, or a boyfriend for that matter. I suspected he’d come here, to your house, so I honestly thought his allergic reaction might be an accident. But then I came here and saw the boys unlock the shed and go in. They looked like they knew what they were doing, so I snuck up and eavesdropped. They were talking about how you told them that their next task was to frame the Riggers for Graham’s death. They were going there to plant some of the crushed-up pecans. It all fell into place from there, and I rushed over to the farm to warn Susan and Nick.”

  “Good boys,” Nera said. They smiled bigger.

  “We didn’t know what else to do when we got there, and Harry confronted us, Nera. We tried to get him to just come with us here. We knew you’d know how to handle things. When he wouldn’t come with us, we hit him real hard and knocked him out and, and then we kind of panicked, but we made sure the Riggers couldn’t do much of anything until you told us what you wanted us to do with them. When Harry came to, we walked him back here. His truck is still at their house. We decided that we could probably pin everything on him,” Cole said.

  “We’ll take care of them shortly,” Nera said, but I could hear her own panic building. Her list of “problems” was growing.

  “I tried to call you, Becca,” Harry said.

  “I know. Thank you. You tried calling Nera, too?” I asked him.

  “No, I lied about that,” Nera said. “I also lied about calling the police. No one’s on their way to help either of you or the Riggers,” Nera said.

  How had I been so fooled? How had I missed the clues?

  “What about the postcard?” I said.

  Nera laughed. “I wrote it myself. I thought it might help draw suspicion away from me, should that become necessary. It worked with you.”

  “It did,” I conceded. “So, now you’re going to kill us?” I said.

  “I don’t think I have any choice.”

  “Over pepper juice?” I said.

  “No. You need to disappear now because you know too much.”

  Obviously, I wanted to protest, but suddenly I couldn’t find the right words. Thankfully, Harry still had his wits about him.

  “Which one of the boys are you going to frame for our deaths?” Harry asked. “You’ve got to throw at least one of them under the bus. I might not have gotten the time to tell the Riggers what you were up to, but they know who attacked them. They’ll be able to back up any story you give the authorities about how Cole and Brad are violent, unless you kill them too.”

  “Relax, boys,” Nera said, though her voice was tenser. “I’m not going to frame either of you. I’m going to make it look like Harry was responsible for everything.”

  Harry laughed. “Right. I’ll be dead. How’re you going to make that happen? Even if you tried to make it look like I committed suicide, not one person would truly fall for that. You’ll have to pick one of the boys.”

  “Really,” I said, following Harry’s lead. “I don’t see any other way it will work.”

  “Yeah, what are you going to do?” Cole asked as both he and Brad, the smiles now gone from their faces, took steps back from Nera.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nera said. “You’ve both been wonderful. You’ve worked on the experiments so diligently and done what I asked you to do. We’ll work something out.”

  The boys were teenagers who’d clearly been manipulated in the worst way possible, but they weren’t stupid. They looked at each other and shared a silent conversation. Nera was wicked in ways that most people didn’t ponder. They knew how cushy it was to be on her good side, but how deadly it was on her bad side.

  A second later Cole dashed into the shed. His movement caught Nera off guard, and she started to swing the gun, but I stepped toward her as she did. She turned the gun back in my direction. She wasn’t sure where to aim.

  “Cole, come out of there,” she said. “If he doesn’t come out, Brad, shut him in.”

  Brad didn’t move and gave her a look that said he might be done listening to her orders.

  Suddenly Cole burst from the shed. He had a jar in his hands. Just yesterday, I wouldn’t have known what was in it, but today I knew. Nera tried to shoot him, but she must not have been able to set her aim because she missed and blew a hole in the side of the shed just as Cole flung the contents of the jar at her eyes.

  She dropped the gun and went down, screaming in agony. Pepper juice. The irony was something I’d appreciate later.

  “Get over there and pick up that shotgun, Becca, and then get me untied,” Harry said.

  I did exactly that.

  Chapter Eleven

  “She killed her uncle and her cousin? Over pepper juice?” Allison said.

  “Yep. Well, the heat from the peppers, the capsaicin,” I said into the cell phone. “It’s big business, or has the potential to be, I guess.”

  “She’s locked up?”

  “Oh, yes. Both she and the boys. She promised them they were going to be millionaires. The boys might not have killed anyone, but they broke enough laws to be in trouble.”

  “Wow, that’s terrible.”

  “I know. But other than that, I’ve had an . . . interesting few days in Arizona,” I said as I peered at my work. After all the excitement, I hadn’t gone back to the trading post. I’d decided to cut my trip short and head home after only three short days in the beautiful but amazingly hot state of Arizona. Nathan and Amy were going to take me to the airport in their truck, but I’d decided to use my few available hours before leaving to spiff up the scooter. Harry had driven me into town to buy a new seat and a case of oil. I wished I knew how to do a tune-up, but I didn’t. Instead, I’d installed the new seat and polished the bike until the rust and the metal showed proudly.

  I had a feeling that I’d stay in touch with Harry. You never knew when you might need the advice of a good private detective.

  “I guess that’s good,” Allison said. “You do find trouble.”

  “Hey, have I mentioned how hot it is here?” I asked, hoping to distract her from her “troublesome” thoughts.

  Allison laughed. “Yes. I’m glad you’re okay. And I’ve actually got another assignment for you when you get home.”

  “Really? What?”

  “It’s a surprise, but it includes a Ferris wheel and a corn maze.”

  I hesitated. “Well, I love Ferris wheels, but I’m not a big fan of corn mazes.”

  Allison laughed again. “Oh, you’ll be fine. I hope. Get home in one piece. Love you, sis.”

  “Love you, too.”

  I hit End and looked around at the motel property. I wished for more time in Arizona, but it wasn’t to be. I shrugged to myself and wiped the sweat off my forehead, ready to head home and on to my next adventure.

/>   Recipe

  Pickled Jalapeño Peppers

  It turns out that pickling peppers is a pretty easy thing to do. If you’ve ever grown a jalapeño pepper plant or two, you know you can end up with a surprisingly large crop of peppers. This is a great way to use them all.

  1 pound (or so) jalapeño peppers

  Bay leaves

  4 cups cider vinegar

  1 cup olive oil

  1 tablespoon pickling spice (such as McCormick brand), tied in a small cheesecloth bag (you can make a bag using a square of cheesecloth and kitchen string)

  1 cup water

  1 1/2 tablespoons canning salt

  Clean and sterilized canning jars and lids. This is a small recipe. I use pint jars and only fill about four to five of them with this recipe. I use these jars because I like to keep the peppers whole.

  1 canner for boiling the jars after they’re filled.

  Plastic disposable gloves

  First, a note of caution: whenever you handle hot peppers, be sure to wear gloves. The oil in the peppers burns. Trust me on this one.

  With gloves on, wash the peppers. I like to leave them whole for pickling, but some people cut them into quarters or rings. If you do cut them, remove the cores, seeds, and stems. And remember to keep the gloves on!

  Pack the peppers loosely in the jars. They will expand during the pickling process.

  Put one bay leaf into each jar.

  In a saucepan, bring the vinegar, olive oil, spice bag, water, and canning salt to a boil.

  Remove the spice bag and then pour the hot mixture over the peppers, leaving a half inch of air space in the jar. Put the lids on snugly.

  Place the jars in the canner and process for 10 minutes with the water line about an inch above the jars. Using tongs, remove the jars carefully and let cool undisturbed overnight.

  Of course, always check that the lids have sealed properly by making sure they haven’t popped up.

  Enjoy!

  Keep reading for a special excerpt from Paige Shelton’s next Farmers’ Mystery . . .

  A KILLER MAIZE

  Available in paperback December 2012 from Berkley Prime Crime!

  Spider Symbolism from Wikia.com: Linked to treachery and death in many cultures, the spider was seen as a “trickster” in ancient Africa and a “spinner of fate” in ancient goddess cultures; in ancient Greek myths, the goddess Arachne was turned into a spider by her jealous rival Athena. Christian cultures have viewed the spider as an evil force that sucked blood from its victims and, alternately, embraced it as “good luck” because of the cross on the back of some species. The Chinese have welcomed the spider descending on its thread as a bringer of joys from heaven.

  Corn Maze: A thing that I have no desire to ever enter. Ever. Sincerely, Becca Robins.

  I love a good Ferris wheel, so much so that even as I stared up at this one, I was willing to tell myself that it really didn’t look like it might fall apart at any minute. I wanted to hop onto one of the swinging seats and ride the never-ending circle. I wanted it to stop when I was at the top, so I could look across the countryside and see . . . well, from there, I supposed I’d only get a glimpse of more countryside, but it’d be a nice view.

  It probably wasn’t the best idea, though. Maybe it was the strange noise the engine made when Virgil, the operator, pulled the handle. Clunk, clunk, buzz, whoosh didn’t instill the confidence that a smooth engine rev would have. Maybe it was because the swinging seats didn’t seem to swing quite right. At least two of them didn’t seem to be swinging at all but were instead frozen in an uncomfortable leg-up position. Maybe it was because I’d noticed that at least a few of the security bars didn’t look like they would lock into place; they bounced open and closed unless someone was holding them down.

  Maybe it was how the Ferris wheel was decorated, but fake spiderwebs only added a sense of the season, not something ominous. No, those were the least of my concerns. I liked the way they enhanced the spirit of the mid-October Swayton County Fall Fair and Festival.

  Even with all of my doubts, I loved Ferris wheels. I was sure I’d ride this one at some point. I just had to work up the courage.

  “You sell jams and preserves?” Virgil rejoined the conversation after he set the wheel in motion. There were only two riders, teenage boys who either didn’t have much else to do or were related to someone who worked at the fair and were still young enough to feel invincible.

  “I do. I make them first, then I sell them.” I leaned against the tall measuring stick that illustrated the height requirement for the ride. I was short, but at least I was tall enough for all the rides, I’d noted to myself. “I have a small farm. I grow strawberries and pumpkins.”

  “That sounds interesting,” Virgil said.

  Virgil Morrison was somewhere north of sixty, but not far. He’d told me that he’d been working at the fair since he moved to Orderville, South Carolina, twenty years earlier. It was one of the many odd jobs he worked to pay the bills. Over the past few days I’d asked him a number of times about his other odd jobs and his life before the last twenty years, but he’d ignored the questions with either silence or a change of subject. However, he’d finally started asking me about myself; maybe we were getting somewhere.

  His thinning gray hair was so short that it required only a washcloth to groom. His eyes were dark and seemed pupil-less until you looked really closely. When I first met him, I thought he might be angry about something, but that was just the way he held his face: scrunched and strained, uncomfortable and suspicious. After talking to him a few times, I decided that he didn’t know how his face looked and he didn’t much care anyway.

  Virgil also had a tattoo on the side of his neck. It was this, even more than the Ferris wheel or our common wardrobe of overalls, that drew me to him. I was fascinated by a senior citizen with a tattoo on his neck. It was small and only a simple black ink spider, but it had piqued my curiosity. I’d initially thought it might just be a temporary addition, something to go along with the spiderwebs. But I was now pretty sure it was permanent. What was the story behind it? I hadn’t come out and asked directly. After all, I couldn’t even get him to chat about his life outside the fair and festival; I didn’t think he’d be willing to tell me about the tattoo. Yet.

  “It is interesting,” I said. It was the first time Virgil had asked me something personal. I thought I might finally be making headway, and I hoped to ride the wave a little longer. “I’m really lucky to be able to do what I do, even though it is a lot of hard work. Stop by my booth, I’ll give you a free sample.”

  I had plenty of jars of jams and preserves. I didn’t think I’d sold three since we’d set up temporary stalls on Monday. Today was Thursday, which meant I needed to sell at least one jar today to keep at a one-per-day pace.

  The Bailey’s Farmers’ Market owners had requested that Allison, my sister and Bailey’s manager, round up some market vendors to sell their wares at the Swayton County Fall Fair and Festival. The annual event was full of the things a fair should be full of: rides, albeit I wasn’t sure of the safety of any of them; games; baking contests; butter sculptures; and some wonderful and adorable animals to peer at and pet. It was also the rev-up and kickoff to the opening of South Carolina’s biggest corn maze.

  The fair ran from the second Monday in October to the third Friday, with the maze opening on Wednesday during the second week. The deluge of activities was a great way to both offer some family fun and gently shift everyone into fall and the upcoming Halloween holiday.

  I’d been asked to donate some pumpkins for a decorating contest that would be a part of the maze’s opening day. I was happy to donate a whole truck-bed full of pumpkins to the cause, but I was currently doing everything I could to stay as far away from the maze as possible, and it wasn’t even open yet
. I wasn’t a maze person, but that was only because I didn’t enjoy being in spaces where I couldn’t see a way out, couldn’t see over the top, or might end up hopelessly stuck at a dead end.

  Plus, the whole corn-as-part-of-a-horror-story idea was well rooted in my psyche.

  Fortunately, the temporary stalls set up for me and the three other Bailey’s vendors were on one side of the fairgrounds and the far-stretching field of corn was on the other side, past the Mad Maniacal Machine, aka the old, small roller coaster. But no matter where I was, at my tent or visiting the rides, food carts, trailers, or some of the animals in the two small barns, I could glance out and see the large hand-painted sign that stuck up from the middle of the maze. It was a cartoonish but eerie portrayal of a house that apparently used to sit on the property. Whether the actual house had been as spooky as the one in the illustration, with its big gaping windows and leaning walls, I wasn’t sure, and I hadn’t had much luck finding out. Every time I tried to get more of the house’s story, my questions were met with either shrugs or comments like “I dunno” or “Ah, gypsy magic.” The reactions only added to the atmosphere, though, so I’d begun to think that the people I’d asked were being purposefully mysterious.

  So, not only did I avoid the maze itself, but I also tried to avert my eyes from the sign. I did think that business might actually pick up once the maze was open.

  The fair owners had been mostly honest when they told the Bailey’s owners that their annual event had become less and less popular over the years and needed some help. They thought that the popularity of Bailey’s products might attract more fair attendees.

  The fair, however, seemed not merely “less popular” but rather, pretty close to all the way dead. Bailey’s might have made a great name in the world of farmers’ markets, but we weren’t doing anything to help the fair’s attendance numbers.