Green Living Can Be Deadly (A Blossom Valley Mystery)

by McLaughlin, Staci

  Jason nodded his thanks to her and rubbed my arm. “I won’t be long. The cops probably don’t know anything yet, not even her name.” He turned to go.

  “Her name’s Wendy.”

  He swiveled back. “You know her?”

  “We went to school together. She’s twenty-eight, like me, but with her own company and who knows what kind of fantastic life ahead of her. And now it’s all over.” I rubbed my forehead. The threat of a headache was creeping in.

  Jason jotted something in his notepad. “When did you last see her?”

  I thought about how I’d walked straight past her tent when I’d decided to see the other booths. Had she been alive at that point? She hadn’t called to me as I went by. Was she already bleeding to death on the cold, hard pavement?

  “Dana?” Jason asked, his voice tender.

  I rubbed my head again. “Sorry. I talked to her this morning. Then Kimmie showed up here and some guy visited Wendy’s booth. In fact, you should find that guy. He was sure mad.”

  “Do you know what it was about?”

  “Was this before I got here?” Zennia asked. “I don’t remember that.”

  “You got here a few minutes later.” I closed my eyes, but I came up blank. “With everything that’s happened, I don’t really remember what I heard,” I told Jason.

  “Take your time. I need you to tell me anything at all that comes to mind.”

  “I have a better idea!” someone behind me boomed. “How about you tell the police everything you know?”

  I turned to find Detective Palmer glowering at me. With his arms crossed over his chest, he looked like one unhappy policeman.

  Which meant I was about to be unhappy, too.

  4

  Detective Palmer glanced from me to Jason, then back to me. “Tell me what happened.”

  I gulped, suddenly nervous, and stared at the diamond pattern on his blue tie. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear a thing, and I was in my booth the whole time. Well, except when I walked around at lunch.” I turned to Zennia. “Did you hear anything? Did you leave the booth at all?”

  “For a few minutes. I left the package of napkins in my car, and when I went to get them, I ran into an old friend, who wanted to see the festival. We got to chatting about this new holistic herb she read about, and I’m afraid I lost track of time.”

  Before I could ask anything else, Detective Palmer took my elbow and directed me toward the parking area. “Let’s continue this in my car before you start interviewing all my witnesses. I don’t want you messing around in this.”

  I tried to wave to Jason, but he had his back to me as he busily scribbled in his notepad, all business. Detective Palmer released my elbow and led the way across the street. I trudged behind, trying to ignore all the stares and whispers from the growing crowd, but failing. At least he didn’t have a grip on me anymore. People wouldn’t mistake me for a felon about to be handcuffed.

  He unlocked the passenger side of a blue Ford Taurus and opened the door, motioning me to sit down. Once I was settled in the worn leather seat, he slammed the door and walked around to the driver’s side, giving me a few seconds to have a mild panic attack. I managed to get my breathing under control before he opened his door and slid in.

  “Now, then,” he said, “tell me about finding the body.”

  In a flash, I saw a chance to escape from the car. “That’s where you’re mistaken. I didn’t find the body. You need to talk to Kimmie.” I placed a hand on the inside handle. “Let me get her for you.” I pushed the door partway open.

  “Hold it.” Detective Palmer didn’t speak that loudly, but his voice held enough authority that I froze with one foot halfway out of the car. “Shut that. We’re not done.”

  I pulled my leg inside and closed the door, but I kept my fingers wrapped around the handle. I told myself to calm down. Surely, the detective didn’t think I was involved in Wendy’s death, and I needed to do everything I could to help him.

  “If this Kimmie found the body, what part did you play?” Detective Palmer picked up a notebook from the center console.

  “Kimmie and I walked to the booth together, but I stopped to tell Zennia about the tofu wraps they were selling at the other end of the street. Before I got the chance, Kimmie started screaming. I ran next door and saw Wendy’s body. Then Kimmie fainted. I asked a guy to call 911, and the paramedics showed up. That’s it.”

  “You called her ‘Wendy.’ You knew the deceased?” He asked the question in a monotone, but the little hairs on my neck prickled all the same.

  “A long time ago. We were good friends in middle school and hung out a bit in high school, but I hadn’t seen her since graduation.”

  “Why only a bit?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you were such good friends, why did you only hang out a bit in high school?”

  I shrugged. “We ended up on different tracks. Kimmie and Wendy had one lunch period, while I had the other. With no classes together, we eventually drifted apart. I made a new set of friends.”

  “You sure there wasn’t more to it? An argument about a boyfriend, maybe?”

  “What are you getting at?” I asked.

  Detective Palmer tapped his pen on the notepad. The noise sounded ridiculously loud in the confined space. “Maybe Wendy didn’t want to be friends anymore. Maybe you harbored some resentment over that and it resurfaced when you saw her today.”

  I stared at him. “Are you for real? Who would hold a grudge for ten years? Besides, Wendy was still my friend in high school. We just didn’t see each other very often.” I shifted in my seat and exhaled loudly through my nose. He couldn’t really believe such an absurd theory, could he?

  Detective Palmer tapped the notebook with his pen again. I wanted to grab that pen and throw it out of the car, but some law surely existed on the books about throwing an officer’s writing utensil away.

  “Relax,” Detective Palmer said. “I get paid to ask.” He flipped to a new page. “Now, then, tell me when you first saw the murder victim today.”

  My stomach seized. I was almost positive Wendy had been murdered, but to hear Detective Palmer confirm my guess added an extra layer of reality to the situation.

  “Well, I think it was around nine-thirty, maybe ten. I got here shortly after nine, set up the table and the photo collage, then waited around for people to show up. No one did, so I figured I’d see what other vendors were offering and hit Wendy’s booth first. We recognized each other and started chatting.”

  I pictured Wendy’s smiling face in my mind. The entire morning was taking on a daydream quality, and the details were already bleeding around the edges, much like the wound on Wendy’s neck.

  I shuddered.

  “And then?” Detective Palmer prompted.

  “People started coming, so I went back to my booth to promote the farm. Once the crowd thinned out again, I was going to pop back over, but then Kimmie stopped by.”

  “And that’s when she found the body?”

  I waved my hand. “No, that was later. First a man showed up and started yelling at Wendy.”

  Detective Palmer sat up straighter and twisted in his seat, ready to pounce on any information. “Can you describe him?”

  I tried to drum up an image of the man as he hustled past my booth, but I found I couldn’t recall much. “African-American, probably in his forties, with really short black hair. He was wearing this tangerine jacket and tan slacks.”

  He scribbled in his notebook. “Did you get a name?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to recall everything I’d overheard, but I hadn’t heard much. “No, sorry.”

  “We’ll track him down.”

  I continued to describe the morning, from Zennia’s arrival to running into Kimmie at the food booths. As I talked, I watched as the crowd grew around Wendy’s tent. From my vantage point in the parking lot across the street, I couldn’t see the paramedics or Kimmie at all. I didn’t even know if
Kimmie had been transported to the hospital so a doctor could examine her.

  One thing I could see, though, was the empty street. Other than the people crowded around the crime scene, no one else walked around or visited the booths. Why look at green-living products when, instead, you could look at dead things and act like you were in the middle of a Cops episode?

  “What about the festival?” I asked, hating to ask after someone—an old classmate, no less—had been murdered.

  “What about it?”

  I tugged at a loose thread sticking off my pant seam. “Will you shut it down? I mean, you probably should, but some of these booth operators traveled from Mendocino or all the way from Eureka. It’s a pretty big deal for them.” And for Esther and me, too.

  He tapped the keyboard attached to his computer and read what was on the screen. I had no idea if he was looking up something related to my question or checking the latest weather report.

  “Probably not. Once we process the crime scene, it should be business as usual.”

  As usual as business could be, with a homicide victim in the middle of the festival. In a town as small as Blossom Valley, most people had probably already heard about the murder. The festival would draw mostly looky-loos, not people interested in green products and methods.

  Detective Palmer closed his notebook. “That’s all for now. If you could point Kimmie out to me, I’ll speak to her next.”

  “Of course.” I pushed open the car door and shivered in the chilly air as I stood, regretting my choice to leave my windbreaker back at the farm. I looked at Detective Palmer over the top of his car. “One more thing, I almost forgot. A woman tried to see Wendy a couple of times. When she saw that other people were already talking to her, she left.”

  The notepad reappeared. “Describe her.”

  “About my age, long brown hair, flowy dress, with cowboy boots.”

  “Not much to go on, but maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll come back.”

  I slammed the door. “I’ll let you know if I see her again.”

  As I walked across the parking lot, I spotted Kimmie talking to Zennia at the farm booth and led Detective Palmer over, glad to see the paramedics hadn’t felt the need to take her to the hospital.

  “Kimmie, Detective Palmer here needs to ask you about finding Wendy,” I said when we reached the table.

  I felt Detective Palmer stiffen at my side and wondered if I’d somehow overstepped my bounds. But when I looked at his face, I saw his gaze fixated elsewhere. Namely, on the chef’s knife in Zennia’s hand.

  Uh-oh.

  “Ma’am,” Detective Palmer said quietly, “would you mind laying your knife down?”

  “What?” Zennia dropped the knife on the table, where it thunked on the plastic surface. “Oh, my, I was chopping some tomatoes, trying to distract myself from this horrible business.”

  From his pant pocket, Detective Palmer removed a pair of latex gloves and pulled them on. Once each finger was in place, he took a paper bag from an inside coat pocket and shook it open. He gingerly picked up the knife by the tip of the handle and lowered it into the bag. “I’ll take this for analysis.”

  Zennia had been resting her other hand on the tomato she’d been chopping. At the detective’s words, she pressed her hand down. Juice squirted out of the tomato, reminding me of the blood around Wendy’s neck. I looked away. I might never eat tomatoes again.

  “You can’t think I used that knife to . . .” Zennia let the statement trail away. “My soul is in harmony with the world. I would never take a life.”

  Detective Palmer didn’t comment.

  “But I thought she was killed with one of those mini turbines,” I said. “I saw one next to her body. One of the blades had dark marks like blood on it.”

  The detective continued his Marcel Marceau routine and remained mute. His face was impassive. Man, he could be annoying.

  “Could that little blade really kill someone?” I asked. “Is it even sharp enough?”

  He ignored me and addressed Kimmie. “I’m going to put this in my car. Stay here until I get back.” He eyed me before looking at Kimmie again. “Better yet, follow me.”

  Without a word, Kimmie trailed behind the detective like a condemned prisoner walking the green mile. I’d probably looked the exact same way a short while ago.

  With my mind whirring, I watched them go. While talking to Wendy, had Kimmie seen or heard anything that would help the police? I turned to Zennia. She appeared to be in a trance of some kind. Was she meditating at this very minute?

  “Zennia?”

  She snapped to attention. “Sorry, I’m beside myself. How could that detective think my knife was involved in that woman’s death? I won’t even kill the ants that sneak in my kitchen. I scoop them up and put them outside.”

  It was true; I’d seen her escort the little critters out. “I’m sure he knows you didn’t kill Wendy, but he has to examine any potential weapons. It makes me wonder if that little wind turbine wasn’t the murder weapon after all. But then why did it have blood on it?”

  “You’re not considering investigating another murder, are you?” Zennia asked. She pressed two fingers to each temple as if trying to clear her mind of the image.

  “I’m sure the cops will do fine without my help.” Besides, it wasn’t my problem, unlike the last murder when my sister, Ashlee, had been involved. “But I am a bit curious to know what they’re doing next door. Think I’ll go check.”

  I left Zennia with her tomatoes, and nothing to cut them with, and moved to Wendy’s booth, where a larger crowd had gathered. The police had set up a temporary blockade, with a semicircle of upside-down buckets and yellow crime-scene tape strung between them. A uniformed officer stood before the opening of the tent, keeping people from seeing what was happening, though that didn’t stop the spectators from staring at the tiny gap that still remained. Flashes of light appeared every few seconds from inside the tent. The police photographer must have arrived while I’d been away.

  Beside me, a man crunched on a salad he carried in a plastic take-out container. The noise dug into my brain like a drill bit. I tried to tune the sound out as I studied the rest of the faces in the crowd, spotting my mailman, a barista from the Daily Grind coffee shop, and one of my old grade-school teachers. My gaze traveled through the rest of the crowd. On the outer edge of the opposite side, I spotted a tangerine-colored sleeve practically glowing through the clump of people. No way could two people be wearing that color at the festival.

  My senses went into hyperdrive as I honed in on the man. The crunch of lettuce sounded exponentially louder. My nose discerned the odor of onions and cucumbers in the salad. The breeze prickled my skin.

  A woman walked in front of him and stopped, blocking my view for a second. As she shifted in place, I could just see the back of the man’s head as he left the crowd and moved down the street.

  He was getting away!

  I craned my neck toward the parking area, where Detective Palmer’s car sat. From this angle, I couldn’t see if anyone was still in the car. I swiveled back toward the man again and saw that he’d turned at the corner of the Prescription for Joy drugstore. As I watched, he disappeared from view.

  I took two steps toward where Detective Palmer’s car was parked, then reversed course. I didn’t have time to find Palmer. The man would be long gone by the time the detective got here, and I was the only one who knew what he looked like. I needed to follow him.

  With my sense of self-preservation still trying to steer me toward the detective’s car, I pushed it aside and ran toward the drugstore, skirting past the back of the booths on the other side of the street. Around the corner, a narrow dirt path ran between this building and the Get the Scoop ice cream parlor next door. The path was empty. The man was gone.

  I trotted down the trail and stopped when I came to the other end of the building. I peeked around the corner. An empty lot with broken glass, cigarette butts, and tufts of weeds waite
d for me. To my left, a Dumpster sat about halfway down the back side of the drugstore. I detected a faint scratching noise coming from the other side of the metal container.

  A stray cat? A giant rat? Or was the man hiding there? Had he seen me follow him? He could easily be crouched down, waiting to strike when I walked by.

  Do I dare check it out? He might know something about Wendy’s death. Heck, he might even have been involved!

  I knew seeking out the source of the noise wasn’t the dumbest thing I’d ever done, but I worried that it might end up in the top five. Still, with a rapidly beating heart and quaking legs, I stepped toward the Dumpster . . . and whatever waited on the other side.

  5

  I trod lightly as I approached the Dumpster, my Vans making the barest of noises on the loose-packed dirt. Rather than walking directly next to the Dumpster, I made a large arc around it. If the man was waiting for me, I wanted a chance to run.

  No more than a minute had passed since I’d reached the corner of the building, yet I felt as if I’d been creeping along for an hour. At last, I spotted a foot at the end of the Dumpster. I couldn’t remember what shoes the man had been wearing, but he didn’t strike me as the dirty-sneaker type. I took another step and saw a leg clad in filthy gray sweatpants.

  Definitely not my guy.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding and stepped forward with more confidence. A man sat on the other side of the Dumpster, his back to the wall, his feet stretched out. Besides the sweats, he wore a long-sleeved Henley, frayed around the neck, and a worn ski parka, with stuffing oozing from a tear. He was eating a fast-food hamburger. The crinkle of the wrapper must have been the noise I heard.

  He caught me watching him and raised his free hand. “Afternoon,” he said as he continued chewing.

  “Sorry to interrupt your lunch, but did a man run through here a minute ago?”

  The man swallowed his bite. “He weren’t running, but I did see some guy in a bright coat head thataway.” He used the hand holding the hamburger to wave toward the next block. The street was empty, but maybe he hadn’t gone far.