by Diana Saco
Sugar! I clutched at that last thought like a lifeline.
“Well,” I said, “I was hoping to borrow a cup of sugar, but I didn’t think anyone was home.”
“We just got back. Sugar, you said?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you live near here?” she asked me.
“Oh, this is awkward,” I said, embellishing my story with a few truths for authenticity. “No, Dr. Moffit. I’m staying with Chloe Owens until the conclusion of her trial. Terms of her bail.”
“I see,” she said, pursing her lips in slight disapproval.
“Look, I’m sorry to bother you. I didn’t realize whose house this was. I’ll just be on my way.” I started to turn away when she stopped me.
“Did you bring something?” she asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Did you bring something? To put the sugar in?” she added.
“Oh! Um, no. I’m afraid I came rather unprepared.” Ain’t that the truth! I thought.
“Hang on.” She disappeared behind the door. Moments later, she returned with a pint-sized plastic container filled more than halfway up with sugar. “Is that enough?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, more than enough. Quite generous, in fact, especially under the circumstances.”
“I won’t condemn you for the company you keep, Ms. Braco—seeing as how you’re under court order and all.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
“Besides,” she added, “murder is no reason to be unneighborly.”
I felt my mouth preparing for a reply, and then it just stopped, gaping open at Maxi while my brain struggled to catch up. The only comment that came to mind was What a creepy thing to say! Eventually, I responded with a polite, “Uh, thank you for the sugar, Dr. Moffit. And for your hospitality.”
“It’s my middle name,” she said with a flourish. Then she wished me a good night and closed the door.
Dr. Maxine Moffit was one cool customer. That much was certain. I was no longer sure, however, that she was a killer. Or Marvin either, for that matter.
I headed back across the yard dejected. Committing a crime wasn’t something I took lightly. So it sucked that I was walking away empty handed. Well, not exactly empty handed. For my troubles, I had managed to acquire a cupful of sugar and craterful of doubt. The reality of the situation began to take form like some creeping specter in the night. I had run out of suspects!
In an unguarded moment, Maxi and Marvin had admitted their feelings. More importantly, I heard them say that they hadn’t acted on those feelings. When they mentioned Monica, I detected a genuine sense of remorse and of loss. I doubted they had known I was there, listening from my hiding place, among the other useless sacks! So I dismissed the idea that it was a pretense for my benefit.
Unless the pretense was not for my benefit. Is it possible one of them acted alone in killing Monica and was lying to the other one about it? That scenario had holes in it, too. Maxi couldn’t have killed Monica without Marvin’s help. To have been able to pin the murder on Chloe, she would have had to know details that she couldn’t have gotten without at least Marvin’s input. Like the fact that Monica and Chloe hated each other. And that Chloe was making rhubarb. That she was an artist and would be willing to go out of town to meet clients. And that she didn’t lock her doors. Only someone actually living in Millsferry and involved, at least tangentially, in the bake-off would know these things. Frankly, it was a stretch to think that Marvin knew these details, but he seemed involved enough in his wife’s activities that it was possible. After all, he was the one who immediately blamed Chloe. So Marvin knew enough to help, and Maxi couldn’t have done it without him.
The other possibility was that Maxi wasn’t involved at all, and that it had been Marvin, instead, who acted alone. While he had been less vocal about his feelings, however, he did say he wasn’t ready to move on yet. And he had kept Monica’s possessions. The only items he had apparently packed up were her clothes and toiletries, and the clothes appeared to be in the room Maxi was using, which suggested he was trying to give them to her. This behavior spoke of a husband who was feeling sentimental over the loss of his wife. The other problem with the idea that Marvin acted alone is that he just didn’t seem capable of masterminding such an elaborate crime by himself, let alone executing it. We hadn’t found anything to indicate that he knew what oxalic acid was or how to extract it from rhubarb leaves. Not to mention the fact that it was a woman, not a man, who had picked up the rhubarb leaves from Jeff Woo on July 12. An image of Marvin in a knit cap, glasses, and a dress briefly flashed in my head. I had no problem believing that Marvin would cross-dress to disguise himself at the farmers’ market. But I dismissed the thought for what it was—a feeble attempt to cheer myself up.
I slipped back into Chloe’s house undetected although it didn’t matter as much anymore. Running into Maxi made it unlikely that my excursion would remain a secret. I put the sugar container on a shelf in the pantry wondering what my next move would be.
I sighed realizing I had no moves left except going back to square one. My investigation had just taken the worst turn possible—a dead end.
18. Unreasonable Doubt
I didn’t come clean with Mason the following Monday. I realized over the weekend that if I admitted he was right, I’d have to explain why. I couldn’t just blurt out that I’d broken into the Munch house and overheard Maxi and Marvin talking. That revelation would jeopardize the investigation, Chloe’s case, and my livelihood. Nope, I’d have to keep quiet, which suited me just fine because I never did like admitting when I’m wrong. I did, however, resolve to stop finger pointing.
Unfortunately, Al’s discovery made it hard to ignore Maxi as a suspect. At our morning meeting with Mason and Chloe, Al played video surveillance from the farmers’ market on the day Jeff Woo brought in the rhubarb leaves. Cameras in the vicinity picked up a woman in a knit cap with a garbage bag leaving Jeff’s area at 11:15 a.m.
“That looks like Dr. Moffit to me, Mason,” Al announced.
Mason studied the frozen image on the video. “Did you look into Dr. Moffit’s whereabouts that day?”
“I called her work on a pretext,” I said. “Her assistant told me that she was out of town for the weekend at a NOFA pre-conference meeting in Amherst.”
“I’ve heard of NOFA,” Chloe said. “They do workshops on organic farming, right?”
I nodded. Inwardly, I was conflicted about whether I wanted to find evidence that Maxi was involved. On the one hand, my primary objective was helping to get Chloe acquitted, and we still needed a plausible suspect besides her. On the other hand, I overheard enough at the Munch house to feel certain now that Maxi and Marvin didn’t kill Monica. But if not them, then who did it? Who poisoned Monica Munch?
“Dr. Roth said organic farming had become a pet project of Maxi’s,” Chloe continued.
“Interestin’,” Al observed. “Jeff Woo said rhubarb leaves can be used for killin’ pests. Doesn’t seem so farfetched now that Maxi would know what to do with those leaves then?”
“So it’s plausible that she was the one in video,” Mason pressed. “But she can’t be two places at once. Were you able to confirm she was in Amherst instead of here, Nina?” he asked.
“She would have taken the I-90, so I’m running some queries to see if I can get any payment information off Maxi’s toll-pass transponder.”
“How did you get her transponder number?” he asked.
“Are you sure you want to know?” I responded.
It occurred to me that the radio-frequency identification reader I used on Maxi’s car could be construed as a hacking device. The difference was that Al and I used it to collect data on a person’s location, not to steal his or her toll credits. On the day of Monica’s funeral, when all the relevant parties accidentally ran into each other at Steamy’s, I returned to my car after lunch and saw that Maxi’s car was still parked across the street at Agnes’s soap shop. I walked o
ver and quickly snapped a picture of her license plate and scanned her transponder. I figured (correctly, as it turned out) that, as the investigation progressed, we might need this information to track Maxi’s whereabouts on relevant dates. This was standard PI procedure, but it was one of those tools in our arsenal that was borderline legal and probably unethical. We used it only as an unofficial means of corroborating alibis, to know when we were barking up the wrong tree.
“No, I suppose I don’t want to know how you got the transponder number,” Mason admitted.
“Frankly,” I continued, “we’ll still need to go through official channels if we want more proof that Maxi was in Amherst, like getting her cellphone tower records or, better still, interviewing some of the other conference participants.”
“Let’s see first if your queries come back with any information about her car,” Mason replied. “Besides, what we really need is proof that she was here on the twelfth.”
“Well, this video confirms it, doesn’t it?” Chloe asked.
“I’m sorry to say it doesn’t,” he countered. “Loyal could claim that it was a lookalike. Maybe even Monica.”
“Why would Monica be getting rhubarb leaves?” Chloe asked dismissively.
“I don’t know,” Mason said barely considering the question. “My point is that unless we can provide more persuasive evidence that this is Maxi, it won’t take much to punch holes in the theory that she killed her own sister. For example, why would she come all the way to Millsferry for rhubarb leaves?”
“Well,” Chloe suggested, “if she didn’t want it traced back to her, wouldn’t it make sense that she’d get the leaves from a place she doesn’t frequent?”
“Right,” Al agreed, adding his two cents. “Plus I think the working theory on why she was here is that she came into town to meet up with Marvin and got herself some of those rhubarb leaves while she was at it. Killed two of those birdies with one stone, yabetcha.”
“Maybe killed three birdies,” Chloe said suggestively.
“It’s not enough for reasonable doubt,” Mason said. “If she was here, there should be hotel receipts where they met up. Witnesses. Something more, besides this video, that puts her here on July 12. Do we have anything else?” He looked at each of us for a response.
I had gotten sidetrack and was only half listening at this point, so I didn’t answer.
“Nina?” I heard Mason call.
I refocused on him and then gasped in realization.
“I know who did it!” I said. “I know who killed Monica Munch.”
~ Book 2: The Trial ~
Prologue: A Writer's Notebook
September 16
I’m Nina A. Braco, of the Havana Bracos, and this is my story.
I hate that line. This journal is Chloe’s idea, and she insists that I begin each day’s entry with that exact sentence. She says I should treat it like a writing prompt.
“Think about the promise implied by that statement,” she says, “and then let it inspire you to write big.”
I’m only giving in because Chloe needs the distraction. Her trial starts in two weeks and our side still lacks any concrete evidence that she didn’t do it. Forget concrete evidence! At this point, we’d settle for evidence made of straw and sticks. Who cares if a couple of huffs and puffs from the big, bad prosecutor, Loyal Bingham, blows it all down? We just need for some of the debris to lodge itself into the jurors’ heads long enough to cause a niggling amount of reasonable doubt.
I knew this was going to be a weird case from the moment I saw that poster of the late Monica Munch at the Millsferry Annual Bake-Off in July. People aren’t supposed to look like feathery-headed birds. Chloe seemed so normal by comparison. I didn’t see a whacky baker who would kill someone over a cooking contest. I saw only an attractive Wiccan artist who draws scary pictures for kids’ books and bakes like an angel. Or maybe I just wanted to like her for my own personal reasons that in no way compromised my objectivity. And as I write this, I realize that I’m withholding information from my own diary. Deal with it!
Initially, Al and I conducted a preliminary investigation of the events to help the sheriff’s office find out what happened. Later, Mason hired us to continue the investigation on Chloe’s behalf. Conveniently, I was convinced that she was innocent by then. Despite my warnings, I think Chloe was genuinely surprised when she suddenly found herself charged with Monica Munch’s death and with the attempted murder of Randall Kirkland, our neo-Luddite beekeeper.
Like a true hero, I subjected myself to several arduous challenges in my quest to clear Chloe’s name. I interrogated nudists, which is not as much fun as it sounds. I risked pneumonia and getting arrested for indecent exposure while attending a séance at the Runes. And I nearly broke my neck committing a tiny B&E into the Munch house on the QT while its occupants were supposed to be at a B&B in Cape Cod. The worst part of that horrible night was learning enough about Marvin and Maxi and their unconsummated relationship to admit to myself that I could no longer consider them suspects. (The second worst part was thinking about the two of them consummating anything!)
I hated risking so much breaking into the Munch house just to walk away with fewer suspects than I had going in. That misadventure left me feeling like a discount boob job—a bad idea from the start and totally deflated in the end.
1. Killer Theory, But Can We Prove It?
We had only one objective at our pre-trial meeting on the Monday following Jeff Woo’s revelation. We needed to see if his tip panned out. If so, it could provide us with the evidence we needed to show that someone other than Chloe could have been responsible for Monica’s death and Randall’s poisoning. We reviewed the surveillance videos of the farmers’ market for July 12. We wanted to identify the mysterious woman who had gotten rhubarb leaves off of Jeff’s truck. But I knew something the rest of the team didn’t know. I knew Maxi and Marvin weren’t involved in Monica’s death. I couldn’t tell the rest of the team because I had come to this conclusion through illegal means. Lacking this information, they looked at the videos expecting them to prove that the woman was Maxi.
Since I had already ruled Maxi out, I was open to other possibilities. In fact, by then, I was actively searching for a whole new angle on the case. When Mason noted that it could just as easily have been Monica in the video, I was the only one who took that observation seriously. And so, I considered it—Could it have been Monica getting those rhubarb leaves?
Suddenly, that new angle I had been looking for took shape. I quickly processed all the details of the case and knew instantly that it had to be Monica. As soon as I realized it, I blurted out that I knew who did it. And just as quickly, I remembered that I couldn’t tell them how I knew. So when Mason prompted me to reveal who I thought was responsible, I answered as though I were still working out the puzzle—which, frankly, wasn’t far from the truth.
“Well, let’s think about what you said for a moment,” I began.
“Which part?” Mason asked.
“About it being Monica herself picking up rhubarb leaves. Chloe, did Monica know what you were making for the bake-off?”
“Of course,” she said with a shrug. “A list of the dessert entries is posted on the event website July first. She might have known even before then. I was asking for tips on rhubarb at the farmers’ market when the harvest season started in early June. The albatross was there, and I’m convinced she was eavesdropping.”
“Whatcha thinkin’, Sha?” Al prompted.
“Well,” I began, “It never sat well with me that Chloe’s dessert was the source of the poison if Monica was the intended victim. How would anyone know for certain that Monica would eat one of Chloe’s desserts? No one could guess that, right? Which makes it unlikely that Monica was the target. In the meantime, the fact that it was Chloe’s dessert that was contaminated practically guarantees that Chloe would be suspected of putting the poison there, either deliberately or simply because she didn’t understand how rh
ubarb needed to be prepared. So whoever poisoned the rhubarb must have wanted to implicate Chloe.”
“Which leads us where exactly?” Mason asked.
“We never got anywhere investigating this as a murder. Maybe we should try a different approach. What if the original motive was food sabotage? And what if Monica wasn’t the victim? What if Chloe was the victim?”
I let that sink in a moment. And then I stated what suddenly seemed obvious to me. “I think Monica herself poisoned Chloe’s dessert.”
The three of them briefly processed what I’d said, and then the meaningful silence was interrupted by a loud retort.
“That troll!” Chloe blurted.
We all looked at her surprised by her outburst. She was usually detached. I, for one, liked seeing this side of her.
She sensed the scrutiny and apparently felt the need to explain. “Well, look at the mess she’s cooked up for me, and all because of a silly contest!”
“That’s one fine theory, Sha,” Al said. “Lots of those pieces fall into place there.”
“What do you think, Mason?” I asked.
“Lay it out for me. Monica’s motive, opportunity, and end game. And how does she wind up dead? Why would she poison Chloe’s rhubarb galettes and then eat one knowing it would kill her?”
