Fruit of All Evil

by Paige Shelton

  He was one hundred percent correct, but that still didn’t change my plans.

  “How about this?” I began. “How about I keep a good distance from anyone who might be dangerous and leave the real investigating to Sam? I won’t do anything . . . well, anything important, without calling him and letting him know. He’s at Bailey’s right now and wants to talk to me. I’ll be up-front with him, too.” All this forthrightness made my throat hurt, but I didn’t want to lie. In fact, I wanted to do exactly as I said. I hoped I’d be able to stick by my words.

  “Promise?” Ian’s expression was doubtful.

  “Scout’s honor.” I held up a two-fingered peace sign.

  Ian laughed and reached for my raised hand. He put my first two fingers together and raised the third. “Now, cover your pinkie nail with your thumb. That’s an appropriate Scout’s honor.”

  “You were a Boy Scout?”

  “Yes, but that was long before the tattoos.” He smiled.

  “I’ll be careful, Ian, I promise.” I looked up into the dark eyes that could make me do just about anything, with the possible exception of agreeing to meet his family.

  “You’d better. I’m going to need help with all that lavender,” Ian said. He tipped up my chin and kissed me quickly. “See you tonight?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied as he turned to walk away. The strain between us was definitely dissipating, but I’d still have to give him an answer soon.

  I watched as he and Sam greeted each other in the aisle. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but it seemed to be just simple hellos.

  “Sam,” I said as he made his way to my stall.

  “Becca.”

  “Did you find Jeanine?”

  He shook his head. “Becca, what were you doing on the ledge of my building last night?” It was like him to take ownership of the government building, just like he probably called Monson “my town.”

  “How did you know?”

  We were interrupted by a customer who wanted three jars of blueberry jam. The delay allowed Sam’s serious face to relax slightly. I always liked talking to my friend Sam better than to the police officer Sam.

  “Really, how did you know?” I said after the customer walked away.

  “You just told me.”

  “What?”

  “The night janitor saw an open window. He shut and locked it, then later thought maybe he should let me know about it. I remembered the direction you’d come from when you walked through the station. I guessed.”

  “You’re a good policeman, Sam.”

  “Becca, putting any illegalities aside, that wasn’t a safe maneuver.”

  “I know. I realized as much when I got out on the ledge. I tried to get back in, but your janitor was too quick, and . . .” I paused.

  “And?”

  “I guess I wish it hadn’t been the janitor who shut the window. I thought that whoever did it might also be the killer. I thought maybe I’d narrowed it down to the dinner guests. Now, it could be anyone.” I bit at my bottom lip.

  Sam looked at me for a long moment and then said, “Exactly. That’s why you should have volunteered the information about someone shutting you out on the ledge. It might have been valuable to the investigation.” He sighed. “Becca, I really wish you’d let the police do our jobs.”

  I nodded. “Okay, I will,” I said hesitantly. I’d just told Ian I would be up-front with Sam, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Did you discover anything on your excursion? And what were you trying to discover in the first place?”

  “Originally, I wanted to know if Linda was in the interview room. I wanted to know if she was a prime suspect. I knew you wouldn’t let me walk though the station to find out.”

  “True.”

  “I made my way into the men’s bathroom. From there I went to the cells. I talked to Linda for a minute, and then you saw me come through the station again. That was all.” I’d had a moment like this with Sam before—a moment when there was something I knew he should know but I wasn’t ready to share quite yet. He—the police, at least—should know what I overheard in the bathroom. Drew’s end of the conversation was suspicious, but I wasn’t going to make him look guiltier than he might be. There were plenty of other avenues to explore, and I had a plan to find out more about Drew before I told the police. I fought the urges to do what I knew I should do and what I wanted to do—keep quiet. What I wanted, won.

  And just like that, I broke my promise to Ian.

  “What did you and Linda talk about?”

  “How terrible it was that Madeline had been murdered. How awful it all was. How the wedding was postponed. Nothing much beyond that.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam nodded.

  “But there is something . . .” I began, thinking I might have something I was willing to share that could be useful to the investigation.

  “What?”

  “This morning, really early, Drew’s cousin Alan came by my house to bring me some of Linda’s pies to deliver to her customers. He was . . . well, he was strange.”

  “In what way?”

  “He wanted to know if I’d ever consider selling my land.”

  Sam thought for a minute. “Okay.”

  “He was sort of pushy.”

  “That might not be strange. He might be pushy by nature. Besides, Alan recently sold some land outside Smithfield, and he’s looking for some around Monson. He was working with Madeline to find something. He has to invest quickly or pay some sort of tax penalty.”

  Is this what in between things at the moment meant?

  “Okay, but still, he was either kind of creepy or it was too early in the morning for me to process normal conversation. He didn’t stay long, but it was a minute or two too long, if you know what I mean.”

  “Noted. Thanks for telling me. See how easy that was?” Sam smiled, cracking his tough image. I liked it when he did that.

  “Now, how about you share? Anything you want to tell me?” I smiled.

  This time Sam laughed. Any minute now, his slicked-back hair would spring a curl.

  “Well, I sent Officer Norton out to Jeanine Baker’s farm, but haven’t heard back yet. I thought I’d go myself. You want to come along for the ride?”

  “Really? On official police business?”

  “Tell me you weren’t going to go out to her place alone. I figure if you go with me, I can at least attempt to keep you out of trouble.”

  In fact, I was going to check on Jeanine after work.

  “Can I have five minutes?” I asked.

  “You can have three,” Sam said as he looked at his watch.

  I still had two of Linda’s pies, but they were easily taken care of with a conversation with Herb and Don and a handwritten sign on Linda’s stall. I still had plenty of inventory, but didn’t have time to pack it into my truck, so I just put it in boxes and set them under the display tables.

  I’d gone well over my three minutes when Sam’s phone rang.

  “Sam Brion,” he answered it. “Okay. Yes, sure. On my way.” He snapped the phone closed. “Sorry, Becca, gotta go. Can’t wait.”

  “Was that about Jeanine?”

  “Gotta go.”

  “Can I still come? I’ll clean the rest of this up later,” I said. I didn’t want to miss whatever was happening on the other end of the phone conversation.

  Sam hesitated, then nodded stiffly. “Come on.”

  For the first time in all the years I’d worked at Bailey’s, I left my stall unattended without so much as a note letting customers know when I’d be back. The market manager wouldn’t be happy, but at least I’d made sure that Linda’s pies were in good hands. Fortunately, since the market manager was my fraternal twin sister, I didn’t think she’d kick me out of Bailey’s for one small infraction.

  Or at least I hoped she wouldn’t. She did take her job pretty seriously.

  Eleven

  Much to my h
ippie parents’ disappointment, I’d never ridden in a police car. And my truck could barely go over fiftyfive miles per hour, so the high-speed drive to Jeanine Baker’s chicken farm in the front passenger seat of Sam’s police Charger was an adrenaline rush like I’d never experienced.

  Sam kept his eyes on the road. I double-checked my seat belt, held on, and tried not to yell, “Wheee!”

  “What did Officer Norton find?” I asked.

  “It’s what she didn’t find.”

  “What?”

  “No Jeanine and not very many chickens.”

  Jeanine might be out, but it was unlikely that she’d taken her chickens with her. I understood Sam’s rush.

  Jeanine lived closer to Madeline’s estate than to my farm, but she wasn’t one of the rich people. Her land had been in her family a long time, and the property was small and hidden from the main road, which was only a two-lane state highway.

  Sam had turned on his flashing lights but kept the siren off. There wasn’t much traffic, and he was extra cautious going through intersections. Even though we were in a hurry because we were worried about a friend, I was having a blast.

  In record time he turned onto the narrow dirt road that led to Jeanine’s farm. The Charger handled the bumps much better than my old truck would have, and in a few seconds Sam maneuvered the car to a stop in front of Jeanine’s house.

  “Stay here, Becca,” he said in a firm tone. I nodded, knowing I shouldn’t argue.

  The inside of the car became heavy with quiet once Sam disappeared into Jeanine’s house.

  The house was old, in need of paint, and there was a crack in one of the front windows. There was a small front yard with mowed grass and no weeds. The patch of green stood out against the drab house and the dirt area behind the fence to the left of it.

  Jeanine’s house seemed very empty. The long moments ticked by as I waited for Sam to reappear.

  Suddenly, a flash of movement appeared to the left of the house and atop an old fence post. I didn’t know much about chickens, but I was fairly certain that a rooster had just jumped or flown to the top of the post. The bird had a bright red crest on its head; its body was mostly dark with a splash of orange on its wings.

  “Hello, there,” I muttered quietly. “Where are all your friends?”

  As if to answer my question, another bird, all white, appeared from behind the side of the house and paced the ground underneath the rooster. And then another one appeared. And then a few more. Before long, the entire area was full of chickens.

  “I guess that’s one mystery solved,” I said, and got out of the car just as Sam came out the front door.

  “Did you find Jeanine?” I asked.

  “No, but we found the chickens.”

  “Were they hiding?”

  “Sort of. There’s a coop in the back—some were in there—but there’s a whole other area behind the coop. Officer Norton thought the property ended after the coop, so she didn’t look any further. The chickens were behind the coop and couldn’t get through what looks like an accidental barrier made by some fallen rocks. It was strange.”

  “Ms. Robins,” Officer Norton said as she walked out the front door. She looked embarrassed but was attempting to hide it. “How are you today?”

  “Fine, thanks. You?”

  “Fine. Excuse me.” She continued past us and went to look over the fence into the chicken yard. She put her hands on her hips, and I understood why people call wellmuscled arms “guns.” She had some of the most amazing guns I’d ever seen.

  “She’s the one who actually found them,” Sam said, “just as I joined her out back.”

  I nodded. I was the last person to criticize someone for jumping to an assumption. “Can I go in and look around?”

  Sam rubbed a finger under his nose. His eyes narrowed as he said, “You can walk around with me. This is not standard procedure, mind you—in fact, it’s downright stupid of me to do—but if you don’t touch anything, you can look around. Let me know if you see something I should look at. I’m worried about Jeanine. According to your sister, her behavior today is something she’s never done before. She might just be out running errands, but the chickens being loose when we got here bothers me. I’d like to find her. Any ideas that occur to you would be helpful.”

  The outside of Jeanine’s house might need some work, but the inside was just fine. The small front room had a matching chair and couch, done in country blues and reds, that faced a modern flat-screen television. The only messy part of the room was a desk stacked with paperwork and what looked like coin wrappers. I stepped toward it for a closer look.

  “Don’t touch anything, Becca. Just tell me if anything looks curious.”

  I nodded as I peered at invoices, bills, and coin wrappers. Other than the wrappers, the desk looked like a smaller version of my dining table. There was no laptop anywhere, but that wasn’t so unusual for someone who had been farming all her life.

  From the desk, I could either take a doorway directly to my left, into the kitchen, or the hallway farther to my left, to the rest of the house. First, I went into the kitchen; it had a round antique table and chairs, but everything else in the room was modern: shiny stainless steel appliances and a polished wood floor.

  The room was clean and tidy, with only a coffeemaker and a toaster on the counters.

  “Sam, what am I looking for?”

  “Something that doesn’t look right.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “You’ll know when you see it. I searched the house. There’s no evidence that there was any sort of struggle, no evidence that Jeanine left in a hurry or against her will. Her purse—or bag, whichever—isn’t here, so she must have taken it with her. You know Jeanine; you might be able to sense something . . . off.”

  The hall led directly to a small bathroom. There were bedrooms on each side of the bathroom. One was small and the other was smaller, but they were clean; beds were made, and there was no dust anywhere.

  “She’s a very clean and neat person,” I observed aloud. “But I don’t see anything that tells me more than that.”

  I followed Sam back through the kitchen and out a back door that took us directly to all the chickens.

  “Whoa, chickens stink,” I said as I reached for my nose.

  “Yes, but did you smell it before you came back here?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Me either. That surprised me. I checked the coop; nothing but chickens laying eggs in there,” Sam said as he pointed at the wooden structure on the other side of the yard. “The accidental rock wall is behind it. I have no idea how they got back there or who stopped them from coming into the yard, but if it was Jeanine, she’s not going to be happy we let them back in.”

  “Why did you?”

  “It didn’t look like there was a fence on the other side, and I wondered why the rocks were there.”

  “Can chickens be herded?” I asked, wondering how in the world someone could get what looked like hundreds of creatures in the yard to go anywhere they didn’t want to go.

  “I don’t know, but I imagine they’ll follow food anywhere.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “Officer Norton will check the rocks for any sort of evidence, but who knows what that will turn up? Seems like a long shot.”

  I looked at Sam as he surveyed the chickens without holding his nose. He was looking at the same things I was looking at, but I knew he saw much more than I did. I didn’t think it would ever occur to me to consider that the chickens had been put someplace they didn’t belong.

  “Okay, Sam, what’s up? You took me for a high-speed ride in your car. You’re letting me walk around a potential crime scene. What’s going on? Why are you letting me do this stuff?”

  “First, this really isn’t a potential crime scene—unless we consider it a potential crime against the chickens—but there isn’t anything on the books that I can reference.” He smiled. “And they were
n’t harmed. We’re looking for Jeanine. If there’d been signs of a struggle in the house, I wouldn’t have let you go in. Second, maybe we were going faster than your truck can go, but I’ve made police cars go a lot faster, so really we didn’t get here at high speed. And finally, like I’ve told you before, Becca, you have good instincts.” He looked purposefully away from me and observed Officer Norton high-stepping her way back through the chicken yard. She held a black container high and mumbled mean words to the noisy birds that clucked and pecked around her. “Besides, you’d have come out here later today on your own. Am I right?”

  “Yeth.” I said, still holding my nose.

  “Saved you the trouble. Come on, Officer Norton’s got this handled. I’ll get you back to Bailey’s. I don’t think Jeanine’s come to any harm, but I’d sure like to know where she is.”

  I looked around one more time as I followed Sam back through the kitchen and the living room, then out the front door. As I stood in front of the small house, I focused on my gut, my instincts. But nothing happened. I had nothing I could share with Sam.

  Suddenly, a sound came from down the dirt road in front of the house. Sam and I hurried to the edge of the lawn, Sam motioning me to stay behind him. We both hoped the sound was attached to Jeanine’s van and that she was returning to her house.

  But it wasn’t Jeanine. Instead, for the second time that day, I saw Drew’s Honda making its way toward me, stirring up a dust cloud and griming the hood.

  “Sam, that’s Drew’s car.”

  The Honda pulled to a slow stop and Sam approached it. Once the dust cleared, the driver’s window was rolled down.

  “Officer Brion?” Alan said. “Becca?”

  “Yes, Mr. Cummings. Can I help you with something?” Sam asked.

  “Uh . . .” Clearly, Alan was unsure what to say next. There was nothing wrong with driving down a dirt road and minding your own business, but it was strange that he’d picked this particular dirt road. “Well, I came out to talk to Jeanine Baker.”

  “Really? About what?” Sam asked as I crossed my arms in front of myself. This was too weird for my comfort.

  “I wanted to talk to her about buying her land.”