A Secret in the Pumpkin Patch

by Elizabeth Ashby

  "I just wanted to apologize," Scott said, keeping his voice low. "It wasn't you who told Sturgeon about my past. It was Jim Sweetwater."

  It sounded like something Sweetwater would do, but I needed to be cautious in believing Scott. After all, he'd just admitted he'd been wrong to blame me, so perhaps he was jumping to yet another wrong conclusion in blaming Sweetwater. But if it was true, it might be just what I needed to ban my nemesis. "Are you sure?"

  "He's a weasel, so of course he wouldn't admit it," Scott said. "But he's got a tell. All the kids in school know it. My son told me about it. He sticks his hands in his pockets whenever he feels guilty about something. A lie or a mistake or whatever. And he did it when I confronted him about what Sturgeon wrote online yesterday."

  "What made you suspect him?"

  Scott shook his head ruefully. "That's the thing. I never would have if he hadn't come down to the turkey pen to accuse me of killing that young woman who fell off the cliff."

  "Why would he think you might have done it?"

  "No reason that I can see," Scott said. "As far as I can tell, Sweetwater's just been accusing everyone and hoping someone would be stupid enough to admit it. I hardly knew the woman, and even if I had wanted her dead, I didn't have any help with my birds yesterday, so I couldn't leave the pen except for once later in the day when I got the pumpkin farmer to keep an eye on them while I used the porta-potty. My son had a school event yesterday, so he couldn't help with the birds then like he's doing today."

  I looked up the walkway to check the potato farmer's stall, half afraid that he'd rushed off somewhere, finding more people to harass. Fortunately, the Sherlock wannabe was where he belonged, right where I'd seen him in his stall before I'd detoured to check on the grill and Cary. Sweetwater couldn't have gone down to the turkey pen and back in just the few minutes I'd been watching over the grill. "When did he confront you?"

  "About half an hour ago. I had to wait until my son came back from the haunted house to watch the pen before I could come tell you about it. I didn't think it was an emergency. I mean, everyone knows what Sweetwater is like, so I thought it could wait."

  "I'll have a talk with him." I caught a glimpse of Buzz up at the WoodWell stall at the far end of the market, near the steps to the lighthouse. What would he think if he heard that one of the vendors was running around accusing the other vendors of committing murder? It wasn't exactly the sort of behavior that would encourage him to sign up for next year's market.

  Scott left, and Cary returned just as the next person scheduled for a demonstration arrived.

  "All done with your errand?" I asked Cary, offering him the clipboard with the demonstration schedule so he could check that the next person had arrived.

  He nodded unhappily as he accepted the clipboard. "But now I have to do it again before the end of the day. I won't leave, though, if you need me to stay. I did tell my new boss I couldn't work on weekends during the market season. Maybe I should tell him I can't take the job at all."

  "I do need you, but you deserve an occasional break," I said. "If you can't find me, just text me ten minutes before you need your next break."

  His gloomy expression cleared. "I won't need to text you. I can always find you, Maria Dolores."

  "You can indeed," I said with a smile. I owed him a huge debt of gratitude for his having found me in the past.

  He trotted over to the grill and the person waiting to demonstrate—if I remembered correctly—how to grill eggplant.

  I wished everyone were as easily pleased by my decisions as Cary was. Sweetwater certainly wasn't going to like what I had to say. He was now officially down to his very last chance to convince me he could play well with others. One more offense would get him banned from next year's market.

  * * *

  There weren't any customers at Sweetwater Spuds when I arrived, so I didn't have to wait to get down to business. "We need to talk."

  "All you ever do is talk," Sweetwater said.

  I was tempted to prove him wrong by banning him on the spot, without a final official warning. But that would only give him ammunition to use against me—he could claim it showed that I was hotheaded and impulsive—when he complained to the mayor about his being excluded from the market or argued during my performance review that I should be replaced as the market manager. I needed to wait to act until I had absolutely solid grounds, and that meant giving him one final warning, as required by the market's policies and procedures.

  "Most things can be resolved by talking if everyone's acting in good faith," I said. "But I will act if need be. That's why I'm here, in fact. The police have received complaints that you're harassing people in the name of figuring out what happened to Angela Henderson. I've been informed that if you continue with your investigation, the police will shut down the market. So now I'm giving you a final warning: if you keep questioning people about Angela, you will be banned from the market. Not just for the rest of today but permanently."

  "That assumes you'll be in charge next year," he said smugly. "I think you're being overly optimistic about that."

  I'd never been accused of being an optimist before, but he was right that the mayor might well not renew my contract for the next season. After all, people had died under my watch, and the likelihood of doing something splashy enough to redeem myself, like making any of the "best of" lists this year, was pretty much nonexistent at this point.

  "I may be gone next year, but Merle will still be here, and everyone around here likes him. He'll make sure the next market manager knows the trouble you've caused."

  "I'm not worried," Sweetwater said. "Even if your replacement tries to ban me, the mayor will reinstate me."

  "Not when Detective Marshall tells the mayor that you were disrupting his official investigation."

  "No one cares what Marshall says. He makes Inspector Lestrade look like a genius."

  If the world were truly fair, Detective Marshall would have appeared behind us at the exact right moment to hear himself being insulted. I actually turned to look, but no, apparently that sort of thing only happened to me whenever I said something embarrassing, not to other people.

  Sweetwater continued, "Can you believe that Marshall still thinks Angela killed herself? I happen to know she was planning to meet her boyfriend up on the cliff, and they were making plans to elope. She was gone by the time he got there. Or at least that's what the boyfriend says. I'm still working on the final evidence to prove he killed her."

  "No, you're not," I said. "All you can do now is turn over the information you've accumulated to Detective Marshall."

  "I can do much more than that," Sweetwater said smugly, puffing out his chest and brushing back the sides of his long coat so he could stuff his hands into the pockets of the overalls he wore underneath. He probably thought it made him look as smart as Sherlock Holmes. Replacing the corncob pipe and ugly beige scarf with more sophisticated versions would do far more for his image than any pose he might strike. But nothing would ever change his ineptness into genius-level competence. "First, I'm going to solve Angela's murder, then I'm going to get you fired, and then I'm going to take over as the market manager."

  "Over my dead body."

  He shrugged. "I wouldn't tempt fate if I were you. Not after all the deaths you're responsible for."

  It was one thing for me to blame myself for not preventing the deaths that I knew, at least intellectually, I couldn't have stopped. It was another thing for Sweetwater to do it. What was left of my patience evaporated in an instant. I didn't care if he told the mayor that I was impulsive. I wasn't willing to have his negative influence at the market any longer.

  "That's it. You're banned, effective immediately." I stepped over to where his official certificate was affixed to one of the crates of potatoes and tore it down. "You can leave without a fuss and without anyone knowing that I've kicked you out, or you can refuse, and I'll go get Fred Fields to escort you off the premises. Either way, I expect you to be
packed and gone within the half hour."

  "You'll be sorry," he said. "More people are going to die without me here to stop it, and it's going to be all your fault."

  "I'll take the risk."

  "I can't wait to tell the mayor that you're a serial killer."

  Someone gasped loudly from a spot right behind me.

  I spun to see Buzz behind me, frozen in shock, his eyes wide behind his sunglasses and his entire body trembling uncontrollably.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Over my shoulder, I told Sweetwater, "You've got thirty minutes. If you're not gone by then, I'm sending an escort to remove you."

  I softened my voice to talk to Buzz. "I'm not a serial killer. I'm not any kind of killer. You know that."

  In a quavering tone, he said, "But people have died at the market."

  "Yes, they have, but their deaths had nothing to do with me." At least, that had been true until this weekend. None of the previous murders had had any direct link with me. Angela's death was different, though, assuming I was right that I'd been the actual target and she'd been killed by mistake.

  Now there might well be another death linked to me—my own—if someone didn't figure out who had killed Angela pretty quickly. Despite Sweetwater's posturing, he would never catch the killer, even if I let him stay and accost anyone he felt like accusing. I was afraid Detective Marshall wouldn't do much better, at least not before another attempt was made on my life.

  It might be hypocritical of me to get involved in the investigation myself after the lecture I'd just given Sweetwater for meddling, but for once his favorite phrase, "someone had to do it," was the truth.

  Sweetwater was leaving, Detective Marshall was pursuing the wrong theory, and as far as I could tell, no one trusted the private investigator, Wayne Comstock, enough to tell him any useful information. That left only one other person who had a personal stake in finding out what had happened to Angela—me. And, unlike Sweetwater, I actually did things, rather than complain about them.

  But first I had to pretend nothing was wrong in order to reassure Buzz. "You're perfectly safe here."

  "That's not what I've heard. I was talking to the state agricultural inspector a few minutes ago, and he kept saying this place was a whole bunch of tragedies waiting to happen. He reminded me that you never know what people might have tracked around the market." He stared down at his black running shoes. "What if this place is contaminated with varroa mites and I bring them home with me on my sneakers? I couldn't bear it if I lost all my bees."

  "I'm sure it won't come to that," I said. "We can make sure you're in a stall where none of your neighbors could possibly introduce anything that's harmful to your bees. Like the consumer sciences class and the woodworker or the potter. None of them grow anything."

  "I can't risk it," he said, shaking his head. "I've got to go."

  "Why don't I walk you back to your vehicle?" I said. I didn't really want to risk getting stranded all alone in the parking lot after he left, but I had to keep trying to reassure my last, best hope for a beekeeper that the market was perfectly safe for him and his bees. Besides, I wouldn't be in an isolated spot after he drove off. The final pet parade of the day was due to start any minute, and there were still lots of people there on the edge of the parking lot.

  Buzz hesitated, presumably weighing the possibility that I might be planning to kill him rather than protect him. Or perhaps it was just his usual indecisiveness.

  While he tried to make up his mind, it struck me that I still hadn't figured out what had been obscuring the face of the driver who'd tried to run me down, and, as Merle had pointed out, it could have been a beekeeper's veil. Plus, Buzz didn't have an alibi for the time of Angela's death, since he hadn't been with Merle at the time. He was old, but working with his bees kept him healthy and strong. He had the means and opportunity to have pushed Angela off the cliff, but I couldn't imagine why he might have wanted either her or me dead.

  Still, I had to wonder if he was faking his anxiety in order to get me to an isolated spot and finish what he'd started.

  I took a deep breath to slow my whirling thoughts. If I didn't settle down, I was going to turn into Sweetwater, accusing all of the vendors and even potential vendors of being killers, regardless of whether they'd had any reason for attacking me. I still thought someone had tried to kill me, but I was almost certain it hadn't been Buzz. He had absolutely no reason to want me dead. I needed to get over my paranoia and do what I could to change his impression of the market.

  "Where are you parked?" I asked as I started walking down the Memorial Walkway, hoping he'd follow.

  He did, catching up with me and then taking the lead in a rambling, zigzag path that I had to follow since I didn't know where in the parking lot we were headed.

  "What kind of vehicle do you have?"

  "An electric plug-in car."

  "Really?" I asked, relieved to hear that it wasn't a black SUV. I hadn't realized until then just how anxious I'd been about going to the parking lot with him, but now I didn't have to worry. "I thought farmers always had big, heavy trucks."

  "I'm not a farmer exactly," Buzz said. "Beekeeping doesn't generally involve anything that requires a truck, and I prefer not to have anything that might pollute the air around my bees, so an electric vehicle is best."

  I couldn't see any reason why he'd lie about what type of vehicle he drove, and he'd been an unlikely suspect at best. I was prepared to cross him off the list.

  Then Buzz added, "Of course, I need to deliver the harvest to a major buyer once or twice a year, but I don't need to use my own car for that. A friend of mine lets me borrow his big, black monster of an SUV when I need it."

  Okay, so I couldn't completely write him off as a suspect, but I wasn't terribly worried. We were still in a relatively visible area of the parking lot when I spotted a little yellow car painted to look like a bumblebee.

  "That must be your car," I said. "I hope you'll think about everything you saw for yourself here this weekend and won't pay any attention to secondhand information that's nothing more than malicious gossip. And if you have any questions that you want the real answers to, just give me a call. I'd be happy to talk to you anytime. You can take as long as you need to make up your mind."

  "The other markets want me to decide before Thanksgiving," Buzz said. "They've both said I get one more free dinner at the Smugglers' Tavern to discuss things, and then they want a definite answer."

  "You won't be swayed by the free meals, I'm sure. You only care about what's best for your bees." Okay, so I was piling it on, but I was desperate. "I don't have a budget for wining and dining our prospective vendors, but that's because we put all our effort into making the market itself the best it can be. We're just starting out, but you've seen how amazing the market is already. It's only going to get better, and that will benefit everyone who's with us in the early days."

  "I'm afraid I don't have time to wait for the improvement," Buzz said. "I'm not a newly hatched larva, you know."

  "But that's another good thing about this market. We've got young people who will be the future of agriculture. You could find an apprentice here. The teens in the consumer sciences class are looking for new challenges, and they sometimes invite members of the Future Farmers of America to join them. They might be interested in starting their own bee colony. None of the other markets can offer you that sort of interaction with young people trying to decide what to do when they grow up."

  "I'll think about it." Buzz unlocked the driver's door and climbed in.

  I didn't wait for him to start the car and leave before I left to return to the main market area. While the parking lot wasn't entirely deserted, there were only a few people nearby, and the excited cheers over at the Howl-oween parade would make it difficult for anyone to hear if I called for help.

  As I maintained a brisk pace on the way back to the more populated areas, I grew more and more annoyed with the thought that there might be days, weeks,
or even months more of having to be hyperaware of my surroundings while I waited for an arrest of Angela's killer. I wasn't willing to stay hidden inside Merle's farmhouse for all that time, regardless of how much I enjoyed Merle's company.

  It was time for me to step up and be the someone who would do something about finding the person who had killed Angela and tried to kill me. I probably should have asked Sweetwater for the name of Angela's boyfriend, but I was reasonably confident Detective Marshall already knew about him and had probably already interviewed him about his girlfriend's state of mind in the hope of getting evidence to support the suicide theory. Surely Marshall would also have asked about the boyfriend's alibi, just to avoid looking like an idiot later if he didn't ask and it turned out that she'd been killed by someone who was, simply by reason of his relationship with the victim, an obvious suspect.

  The key to getting the case solved, I thought, wasn't to find the killer myself but simply to convince Detective Marshall to reconsider his suicide theory by proving that I had been the intended target, not Angela. I needed something more than the circumstantial evidence that hadn't impressed him so far. Marshall would need something he couldn't explain away, like another attack on me.

  Perhaps Merle could help me come up with a plan to flush the killer out of hiding. Something better and safer than offering myself as bait, which I suspected only worked in fiction and never ended well in real life. Especially for the bait.

  The problem was that we were running out of time. The motive for attacking me had to have been related to my role as the market manager. I'd already tried to think of anyone I knew outside this work who might have wanted me dead, and I'd come up blank. I was on good terms with my family—my relationship with my mother was complicated, but she truly did wish the best for me—and all of my past and current romantic partners. I didn't owe anyone money, and I hadn't knowingly hurt any friends or business acquaintances. All of my clients—other than Eddie—had accepted the closing of my financial planning office without any complaints. I really didn't think Eddie wanted me dead. Like Merle had said, I couldn't give financial advice from beyond the grave.