Pushing Up Rhubarb (A Millsferry Mystery Book 1)

by Diana Saco

  “You threw out all of your desserts, then?” Al asked.

  “Well, all of the ones on the first tray that had been uncovered.”

  “How long were you away from the tent?” Bruno asked.

  “Twenty minutes or so.”

  “Okay, so when you got back,” he continued, “you noticed one of your desserts missing. Which one?”

  “It was one of my rhubarb custard galettes.”

  “What’s a galette?” Bruno asked.

  “It’s a crusty cake. You roll out the dough in a circle, put fruit or vegetables in the middle and fold the edges toward the center in overlapping flaps.”

  “So is it more of a cookie?”

  “Well, it’s round, and the ones I made were intentionally small, so I suppose they looked like cookies. They might have also smelled like gingersnaps because I added a crumble base of sugar, flour, molasses, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove.”

  “Sounds real good,” Al said. “What did you use for the fillin’?”

  “Well, rhubarb, of course, with peaches and some sugar. And I was going to finish it off with a dollop of chilled custard, but I hadn’t gotten around to adding that yet.”

  “Can you walk us through the preparations, Ms. Owens?” Al asked. “Beginnin’ with where you got the rhubarb there, okay?”

  “Well, I get most of my produce from the farmers’ market. I went there Thursday morning before the bake-off. What was that?” She paused a moment to calculate the date. “July 18. I went to my favorite vendor first, Jeff Woo. Everything I bought for the bake-off desserts I got from him—several bunches of rhubarb for the galette and blackberries, blueberries and raspberries for my Very Berry Pound Cake, which was the only other dessert I made. I also wanted another sweet fruit to complement the rhubarb for the galettes and for some jam I decided to make. The peaches were early this season, and Jeff let me sample one. It was just what I was looking for, so I bought a dozen of those, too.”

  “Was the rhubarb fresh picked, ya think, or washed and trimmed?” Al asked.

  “Fresh picked, but the top of the leaves were trimmed off. In fact, that’s the first thing I did when I got home. I cut the remaining section of leaf off the top of each stalk and threw those scraps onto my compost heap. I’m a quick study,” she said with a smile.

  “Meanin’?” Al asked.

  “I’ve never made anything with rhubarb before this summer.”

  That was a revelation, but it did make sense. Our background check on Chloe listed Phoenix, Arizona, as her hometown. She left apparently as soon as she could because the list of residences showed her living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when she was eighteen. After that she kept migrating steadily east until she reached South Carolina and then north, residing in several different cities along the way and never longer than about two years. Except for Millsferry. She arrived here four years ago, bought her first house, and appeared to finally be setting down roots. Her love affair with food started at about the same time, judging from her magazine subscriptions. It made sense, therefore, that she was still experimenting with new foods.

  “What made you decide to try rhubarb?” Bruno asked.

  “There’s this fair I go to in Hopkinton that includes a bake-off. I tasted a couple of amazing rhubarb pies and tarts and even breads last year and decided I would try my hand at something with rhubarb this summer.”

  “How did you learn how to work with it?” Al asked.

  “Jeff gave me some tips in early June when the rhubarbs first came out. I told him what I was planning and asked him for advice on how to select and clean the rhubarb and what to watch out for when cooking it. I also did some research online, watched some web videos, that kind of thing.”

  “What about the rhubarb leaves? What did you learn about them?” Al continued.

  “Jeff said I could use them for compost and even as a natural insecticide, but not to eat them. I knew that already. I had read that they’re poisonous.”

  “Chloe, do you have a number for Jeff Woo?” Bruno asked.

  “Yes, right here,” she said, pulling out her smartphone. “I’ll send it to you.” She tapped a few keys. When Bruno’s phone dinged, he tapped some keys, and then my phone started vibrating. I checked the display. Bruno had forwarded the contact information to me asking that I check with Woo to see if anybody else had gotten sick on his rhubarb. I confirmed the assignment and put it on my schedule.

  “Okay, so you took off the rest of the leaves. What next?” Al prompted.

  “I de-stringed the stalks, washed them, and then chopped them into 1/2 inch pieces. I was going to be using some for jam and some for the dessert, so I just did the prep work recommended for jam. I put all the rhubarb into a huge glass bowl, mixed in a couple of cups of sugar, and let it stand for a few hours. I covered the bowl with a small towel and left it on the counter until I got back.”

  “You went out on Thursday?” Bruno asked.

  “Yes. I had an afternoon appointment in P-town with a potential new client, who turned out to be a no-show. I was annoyed, especially given how much I still had to do, but I was able to bake the pound cakes Thursday evening. I also cooked some of the rhubarb that night. I put about a quarter of the rhubarb in a pot for simmering to start the jam. While that was simmering, I diced all of the peaches and added some to the jam. I mixed the rest of the peaches in with the rhubarb for the galettes. That part I refrigerated until the following day. I finished the jam and the berry sauce and pound cakes on Thursday night. On Friday, I made the galettes. I took the rhubarb and peach blend out of the refrigerator and let it warm to room temperature while I mixed the dough and rolled it out. I mixed oats, flour, sugar, and spices for the crumble. I then hand-made about 200 galettes for the bake-off.”

  “That’s a lot a work for a contest, don’tcha think?” Al asked.

  “Yes, it is. But I had things pretty well timed. While the galettes baked, I made and refrigerated the custard that I would add to them the next day just before serving. Actually, that’s another reason I was concerned when I saw one of the galettes was missing. I hadn’t finished adding all of the ingredients.”

  “I would’ve preferred it with the custard, I think. I bet it tasted real good,” Al said.

  “I wouldn’t know. I never got the chance to taste any of it.”

  “You mean, the finished galette with the custard,” Al clarified.

  “No, I mean any of it. The filling, the baked galette, the custard. Nothing.”

  “I don’t understand. Are you sayin’ you don’t taste as you cook?”

  “That’s right,” Chloe said.

  “If you don’t taste for flavor, how do you know whether or not something you’re makin’ needs more sugar or salt or whatever, then?” Al asked incredulously.

  “Well, I do dry runs for myself until I perfect a recipe. But for the actual contest desserts, I work off the finished recipes and go by smells mostly. In the past, I would try my entries beforehand and second-guess myself, adding something at the last minute that totally ruined the dessert. So now I wait until the judges have sampled the entries before I taste them. And I’ve discovered that I like seeing how others react to my cooking before I taste it.”

  “It would give me the frissons to serve up somethin’ I haven’t tasted. Sure is gutsy of you, Ms. Owens.”

  “I guess I’m just sure of myself,” Chloe said with a smile.

  A noticeable lull ensued. I thought over what Chloe had said and identified a couple of issues that needed to be addressed, so I went around to the interview room door and knocked. Bruno let me in.

  “Nina!” Chloe greeted. “I was wondering when you were going to come out from behind that mirror and join us.”

  I smiled, only slightly abashed. Before I could recover and ask my questions, Chloe took the opportunity to ask one of her own.

  “Now that the gangs all here, would one of you mind telling me what all of this has to do with Monica Munch’s death?”

&n
bsp; “She was poisoned,” Bruno said, and then added, “by your rhubarb.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Oxalic acid, Chloe—your dessert was loaded with it, and that’s what killed Monica,” he explained.

  “But I trimmed off what was left of the leaves, and I washed the stalks. I’m sure I did everything right. And I certainly didn’t give Monica a galette. Unless she took the missing one. Are you sure it was the rhubarb and not something someone added at the Loop when I went back to my car?”

  “It was the rhubarb,” Bruno continued, “because Randall Kirkland got sick from it, too.”

  Chloe looked genuinely shocked. “Randall’s dead?”

  “No, no,” I said quickly. “He got sick from the jam you gave him, but he didn’t die. He’s in the hospital, and he’s going to be all right.”

  Chloe was only slightly mollified. “But if Randall was poisoned, too, than it couldn’t have been the galette. You need to talk to Jeff Woo. Find out if something was wrong with the rhubarb.”

  “We will,” I assured her. “But it seems to me that you would have been able to tell if the rhubarb was tainted when you washed it after getting back from the market. How did your hands feel?”

  Chloe shrugged. “Fine. How should they feel?”

  “Did they get irritated or red? Did you feel any burning?”

  “No, but I wore disposable food prep gloves.”

  “Okay, then we won’t know anything more until we’ve spoken with Woo,” I concluded.

  “What if he says no one else got sick from that harvest?” Chloe asked.

  None of us responded right away. And then I delicately asked her what we were all surely wondering.

  “Chloe, do you know a good attorney?”

  10. What the Grocer Said After Putting His Pants On

  I contacted Jeff Woo after the interview with Chloe and learned that he was out of town until the end of the week. We arranged to meet Friday morning at his home. With nothing to do on the Munch case until then, we turned our attention to other business.

  Al had taken a case involving the suspected theft of a secret barbecue sauce recipe. This meant that while he was off eating ribs, I got stuck doing surveillance on one Agnes Simmons, a local craft maker of all-organic skincare products. We’d been hired by one of her competitors, Izzy Beacon, who was a whiny sort of fellow and complained a lot about expenses, our rates included. He didn’t understand how Agnes could sell her products at such low prices, which is why he suspected that she was using “contraband,” his misnomer for cheaper non-organic ingredients. This was not our usual niche assignment, but Izzy explained that many of the ingredients at issue were edibles—fruits, herbs and spices—and he figured we’d know ways of tracking where those came from. He was right.

  “These natural botanical additives are what make our hand-made soaps and lotions so, so . . .” He had struggled for an adjective.

  “Crafty?” I suggested.

  He smirked and opted for “special.”

  The curious part was that Izzy insisted that our investigation include surveillance. I argued that most of the information he needed could be more easily and less expensively uncovered by checking Agnes’s trash and vendor receipts. Izzy stumbled over his reply, which made me suspicious.

  “B-b-but, you have to. I think she has an accomplice. A boyfriend. You have to find out if she has a boyfriend. Who’s helping her, I mean.”

  I’d been in the business long enough to be able to recognize an ulterior motive, especially when one thumped me on the nose and said, “Howdy!”

  I realized immediately that Izzy was smitten with the Widow Simmons. I wondered if he first noticed her on the weather news. Agnes Simmons was something of a local celebrity. Her son, Aubrey Simmons, was the Channel 9 weather man. Well, sort of. With a degree in meteorology, Aubrey had been hired by the station on the strength of his credentials, the quality of his recorded audio audition, and the wholesomeness of his looks. What the producers hadn’t known, however, is that Aubrey is excruciatingly shy.

  To provide moral support, Agnes came to the studio on the day of his first broadcast. It proved to be remarkably good luck for all involved. She had been helping him rehearse and had memorized his script. So when the director called five seconds, and Aubrey suddenly clamped his hand over his mouth and ran to the nearest bathroom, Agnes stepped in front of the camera and delivered the weather like an old pro. Her genial looks and personality won over the producers and the viewing audience. So everyone agreed that mother and son would share the job. Aubrey would research the weather and prepare the copy and accompanying graphics for the forecast he predicted, which was consistently spot on. And every morning, midday and evening, Agnes would leave her shop in the capable hands of her assistant manager and walk two buildings over to the TV station. While the makeup girl fixed Agnes’s plump round face and hair, Agnes familiarized herself with the scripts her son prepared. Then she would get up in front of the cameras and give the weather forecast. I guess everyone figured that if Willard Scott could get away with delivering the weather dressed as Carmen Miranda, Millsferryzians would accept hearing about local conditions from an affable elderly lady in a print dress and cardigan sweater.

  Shortly after Agnes got back from this morning’s broadcast, I went inside her soap shop to scout the premises. I feigned interest in the process and was rewarded for my deception by Agnes herself, who took me on a tour of the shop, including the back rooms where she and her staff made everything sold in the store. She also showed me a small greenhouse in the back where they grew several of the herbs and flowers used in their products. If Izzy was at all serious about his accusations, I suspected that Agnes was able to keep her costs lower by growing some of the ingredients herself.

  I had parked my car in a storefront lot on the opposite side of the street from Agnes’s shop, reversing into the spot so that I was facing the target of my surveillance. I returned there after the tour and spied on Agnes the rest of the morning to see if any boyfriend—with or without contraband—materialized. I could tell I was getting bored when I started playing word games about an hour later. Coming up with oxymorons made the drudgery of a stakeout less onerous. The present list included “flawed perfection,” “oddly normal,” and “accidental scheming.”

  Acronyms took longer to invent, so they provided a better distraction from the boredom. I would invent an imaginary organization whose abbreviation made up a related funny word. My current favorites were “Bureau of Ocean Buoys (B.O.B.)” and “Clinic for Ladies with Ailments from Prostitution (C.L.A.P.).” Farm always appreciated hearing the results of my wordplay. Given his eternally tween mind, however, he preferred vulgar acronyms. I decided to come up with something for “B.E.L.C.H.” So far, I had “Bilious Eruptions.” I was working on a fitting L word when I noticed a familiar sedan pulling up in front of Agnes’s shop. It was Maxine Moffit’s.

  Unsurprisingly, Maxi got out of the driver’s side, but I was curious to see that she was with Marvin Munch. I quickly grabbed my camera, zoomed in, and started snapping photos of the couple. The odd part was that they really were acting like a couple. Marvin put his arm around Maxi’s waist as he pointed down the street and said something to Maxi that made her laugh. Then they walked into Agnes’s shop. I previewed the images on the camera’s display getting weirded out at how chummy Maxi and Marvin were so soon after Monica’s death. Bruno had said yesterday that the body was only just released to them for burial. The funeral was this afternoon. And yet here they were, shopping downtown like a couple on a date mere hours before his dear departed wife—her sister—was to be laid to rest. Too creepy.

  They came out of the shop about fifteen minutes later with a small bag. Maxi tossed the bag into her car, and then the two of them walked down the street. I decided to follow. I stored the camera, left my car, and started following them on foot. I was about to cross the street when I saw them head over to my side. They were going to Steamy’s Tavern. Perfec
t. It was lunchtime, and I was in the mood for something savory. I waited a few minutes for them to be seated and then entered, sidling up to the counter and taking a stool at the end. They had chosen a booth along the back wall, giving me a perfect line of sight. Since I was backlit by the sunshine streaming in through the windows behind me, I knew my face would be shadowed. Confident they wouldn’t notice me, I got down to serious business—ordering a turkey Reuben and iced black coffee.

  Scotty was manning the counter that day. He was Bruno’s partner, so we’d known each other a couple of years. I therefore wasn’t surprised when he deposited a pad and pen on the counter next to the coffee he had just poured for me. I smiled in appreciation. Grabbing the pen, I began idly working on my latest acronym while spying on Marvin and Maxi, who continued their too familiar exchanges as they ate lunch.

  I was halfway through my sandwich when Farm showed up.

  “Hey, Gorgeous,” he greeted me, pecking me on the cheek and sitting on the stool next to mine. He spotted the pad and read aloud. “Bilious Eruptions League for Clouds of Halitosis—B.E.L.C.H.—Ha! Excellent!” he declared. Then he burped loudly. “And I think I’m already a member.”

  “Don’t be obvious, but do you see that couple over there?” I asked.

  He glanced over. “You mean that dopey looking guy sitting with the ghost?”

  “Yeah. That’s the victim’s husband. And the woman is her twin sister.”

  “No kidding. Do you think he realizes that isn’t his wife?”

  “I was wondering the same thing myself. I followed them from the soap shop.”

  “Oh! Maybe they’re planning to take a bubble bath together?”

  “Let’s not go there,” I said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Aunt Dottie and Chloe Owens are here, too.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “Um, eating,” Farm said, stating the obvious.

  “Oh, right . . .” I took a breath. “It’s just weird having Aunt Dottie, who is currently living with me, hanging out with the subject of one of my current investigations. Not to mention those two being here together,” I said, nodding toward Maxi and Marvin.