by Darci Hannah
A muffled laugh escaped my lips. “True,” I said, “but that man over there doesn’t look like he’s intimidated by much. See? He’s welcoming her aboard with open arms. My guess is he’s a player.”
“Aren’t all men?”
Tay and I watched Hannah climb aboard the hay wagon. She looked winded but happy sitting next to Briz on his fun-size hay bale. Her happiness struck a chord in me, and automatically my gaze shifted to Tate. As if sensing my eyes on him, he turned and stared straight at the bushes we were hiding behind. The bright eyes, so open and so artlessly direct, made me flinch.
“Time to go,” I said, and sprang up like a flushed hare. Then, with the utmost care, Tay and I made our way to the scene of the murder.
It was hard to fathom violent death when walking through a sea of white, fragrant cherry blossoms. The serenity of the orchard was misleading, especially when a gentle breeze came, coaxing the petals from the branches in a blizzard of satiny snowflakes. The scent, and the feel of the petals against my cheeks, sparked the echo of an old memory. Suddenly I was a child again, riding on my father’s shoulders through the cherry blossoms.
“I’m certain that at the heart of every fairy tale is a cherry orchard,” he had told me. “For there’s nothing on earth more magical than walking through a cherry orchard in bloom. But the flowers are only the beginning, Whitney. When the flowers fade away, that’s when the real magic begins.” He’d been talking about cherries, of course—how they’re born at the heart of every blossom and grow throughout the summer months until finally turning into a plump, beautiful red burst of summer flavor. I, however, had thought he was talking about something entirely different. So I was thinking of princesses and knights in shining armor—one dashing knight in particular—when Tay, being far more grounded in reality than I ever was, stopped walking. It was then that I noticed the yellow crime scene tape.
It stuck out like a kindergarten painting at an art show.
The effect was sobering, especially when considering that the man who’d tended the very orchard we were walking through had left us here, on this very spot.
“Damn,” Tay uttered, her deep brown eyes full of fearful wonder. “It’s so beautiful and yet so ghastly.”
“I know,” was all I could say. Then I reminded her not to touch anything as I lifted the yellow tape.
It was like entering another world, the darkness at the center of the fragrant white fairy tale. I stared at the ground. It was covered with white cherry blossoms, crushed and blood-spattered where Jeb had fallen. Then I recalled the body I’d seen in the morgue, and the pictures on Jack’s phone. “My father didn’t do this,” I said aloud, because there was no way he would have. No Bloom would ever dare violate the sanctuary at the heart of our business, at the core of who we were. The cherry orchard was sacrosanct. I suddenly understood all the fear and sorrow in my mother’s voice during that horrible phone call that had brought me here.
“I know, Whit,” Tay said, coming to stand beside me. “No one who knows your dad could possibly believe it. Besides, you said that Jeb was poisoned first.”
“I did,” I agreed, and knelt beside the bruised petals, searching for the tiny reason I’d come here in the first place against Jack’s warning. It didn’t take long. I knew what I was looking for. Remembering the picture he’d shown me, I searched the area where Jeb’s lifeless hand would have been. And there they were—a scattering of clean, dry cherry pits.
“Oh my God!” exclaimed Tay.
“I know. They don’t look like much, but I have a hunch about these,” I told her, picking up a cherry pit.
“No. I’m not talking about cherry pits. I’m talking about that!”
I looked to where she was pointing, at the ground a few feet away from where the body had been. It took me a moment, staring at the pile of twigs, until I saw what she’d seen. The twigs were not random. They’d been meticulously placed to form an eerie, pagan-looking stick face—a face whose soggy, sour-cherry eyes were staring up at me. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
“That … wasn’t in the picture Jack showed me,” I uttered, backing away.
“I wonder why not?” Tay pondered, staring at the face on the ground as if it were an interesting piece of artwork and not the ominous pile of sticks that it was. “It seems a pretty significant clue to me. This looks suspiciously pagan.”
“I agree. That’s what I don’t understand. Why is it here?”
“Maybe Jeb did this?” As she spoke she knelt beside the twig-face. “What if he was trying to tell us something before he died?”
“Like in The Da Vinci Code?” I asked through narrowed eyes, recalling the gruesome opening scene of the movie. “Really? You think a man who was poisoned had time to run out here, gather twigs, and make a spooky-looking face complete with cherry eyes right before he was clubbed in the head with my dad’s croquet mallet? It doesn’t make sense. And on the off chance that he did, what was he trying to tell us anyway?”
“What his attacker really looked like,” she said with an unhealthy amount of confidence.
I raised an eyebrow. “Jeb’s killer was a bark-faced tree man? Even you have to admit, Tay, that twigs are hardly the medium to capture a face. Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to take out his phone and snap a picture?”
“Maybe he did,” she said, standing up. We were both thinking the same thing.
“Where’s his phone?” I asked. “Did he have it on him when they found him?”
“Now that’s a question you’re going to have to ask Jackie McCopper. You might also want to ask him about this twig-face here and why he didn’t mention it to you earlier. I’m going to leave both up to you.”
“Thanks,” I said disingenuously, and took a picture of the eerie face, careful not to disturb it. “I might be able to pick his brain without being obvious. Right now, though, we need to go to the processing sheds. See this cherry pit?” I held up the one I’d taken from the ground. “In the photo, these were lying near his hand. I think Jeb was holding cherry pits when he died. ”
“Why would you think that?” she asked. “We’re in a cherry orchard.”
I explained the significance of the cherry pits to her, just as I had to Jack. “So, you see,” I continued, “these shouldn’t be here. This is why I needed to see the crime scene in the first place. Because I do think Jeb was trying to tell us something—only it wasn’t what his murderer looked like. It was how he was killed.”
“He choked on cherry pits?” Tay looked a little confused. “First they said he was hit in the head by a croquet mallet, then you said he was poisoned, and now you’re telling me he choked on a handful of cherry pits?”
“I didn’t say anything about choking. I’ve done a little research. Cherry pits, dear Tay, in the right hands can be turned into deadly cyanide. And in the processing shed, the one containing the cherry pitter, I’ll bet there are a whole lot of cherry pits—enough to make a lethal dose of the stuff. My guess is that Jeb was somehow poisoned, and when he realized that my dad was going to be blamed for his murder, he grabbed a handful of these and ran into the orchard, hoping to reach the inn before the poison took hold.”
“Oh my God,” Tay breathed. “Poor Jeb. Who would do something like that?”
“I honestly don’t know, but that’s what I’m going to find out.”
Eighteen
Somewhere in the distance, the tractor rumbled and the sound of muffled laughter hit our ears. I knew that Tate had started the cherry blossom tour out by the main road, driving to the very front of the orchard. There he would let the passengers off to wander under the oldest fruit-bearing trees on the property. Once the guests were back on board he would continue, driving up and down a few of the long, dense rows of blossoming trees. Eventually he would veer off into our wooded acreage and travel down a scenic trail. There he’d hit upon the clifftop road,
giving the guests a spectacular view of the seemingly endless lake and a few of the islands that sat at the head of Cherry Cove Bay. From there they’d continue down a winding gravel road that would bring them out to Lighthouse Point and the Cherry Cove Lighthouse. Since this was part of the crime scene, the guests would not be allowed inside. After a quick blurb about the old lighthouse, Tate would continue another half-mile down Lighthouse Road to the processing sheds, the last part of the tour before bringing the guests back to the inn. Today, however, the sheds were also off limits. Hopefully Tate had supplied enough alcohol so that nobody was too disappointed. From the sound of the tractor, I could tell the tour had just entered the woods. I sent Hannah a quick text, asking her to alert me when they were at the lighthouse.
As Tay and I made our way toward the processing sheds, we were aware that we were the only two souls in this part of the orchard. And yet, ever since finding the crime scene and stumbling upon that eerie twig-face, the area had taken on a menacing air. I thought it was just me—just my highly suggestive imagination—but Tay had sensed it too. We both had the feeling that someone or something was watching us. Twigs snapped. Tree limbs rustled. Rogue burst of petals blew into our path. And every time we looked, no one was there.
We’d nearly come to the end of the long row where Jeb’s body was found. The sheds sat just across the way, separated by a swath of grass and a hundred feet of crushed gravel. We were walking steadily toward the buildings, looking for any noticeable sign of footprints, when the sound of a tree limb snapping nearby spooked us into a mad dash. It was crazy. Our imaginations had gotten the best of us. Because, once again, no one was there.
“Holy Hogwarts! What the deuce is wrong with us?” Tay asked, breathing heavily while blocking the shed door with the weight of her body. It was a logical precaution, in case our imaginary pursuer thought to follow us inside. “You have an excuse,” she continued, pointing an unsteady finger at me. “Your brother hosts that sketchy ghost show on cable, so crazy obviously runs in the family. But I’m sane. No one was actually there, right?”
“No one that I could see,” I said, ignoring her sarcastic remark as I flipped on the light and headed for the cherry pitter. “It’s probably just the fact that we stumbled upon a pretty creepy pile of sticks next to the place Jeb died. And,” I said, turning back to her, “if it was the restless spirit of Jeb Carlson trying to reach out to us from beyond the grave, clearly whatever he was trying to tell us fell on deaf ears. We’re a couple of fraidy-cats. Tay, forget the door. Come look at this.”
I’d entered the processing room, a climate-controlled area where every glorious cherry grown in our orchard was washed, pitted, and deposited into ten-gallon containers. Once they were in the containers, the proper ratio of sugar was added. From there the cherries were sent to the refrigerators to sweeten before either being bottled for use in cherry pies, or dried and packaged for use in other baked goods or snack products. It was a big operation, and nearly all of it automated. But it was the industrial cherry pitter I was interested in.
It was a vast, ingenious machine. The cherries, coming in straight from the orchard, were washed and then dumped into a large holding bin. Once they were in the bin, a special conveyer, divided into trays four feet long by one foot wide and covered with holes the size of cherries, would pass through the bin, loading each cherry into a separate hole. The loaded conveyer would then pass beneath a block of thin steel rods, each one lining up with the tray of cherries. The pitter would come down and de-stone the entire tray at once before dumping the cherries onto another conveyer belt, which then carried them to the awaiting ten-gallon containers.
From all appearances, the entire operation had been meticulously cleaned after last summer’s harvest, yet I was hoping my hunch would be correct. I went around to the other side of the machine, opened the hatch to the pit collector, and pulled out the bin. It was spotless. Of course it would be, I thought, chiding myself. Jeb would never let a bin full of sticky cherry pits sit all winter.
“Wow,” Tay remarked, standing beside me. “That’s clean. Not a pit left in sight. So where did they go?”
“Probably some landfill,” I remarked, thinking.
“You guys don’t use them to plant new trees?”
“No, not anymore,” I said. “All new stock is grafted from existing trees. Fruit trees have been so genetically modified over the years that you never know what traits are carried on in the pits. Grafting new stock directly from existing trees is akin to cloning. It keeps the flavor of the cherries consistent and unique to the orchard.”
“Look at you. I love it when you talk cherry to me. But I still don’t get it. Where did the cherry pits at the crime scene come from then?”
I looked at her and shrugged. “Got me. I thought Jeb dropped them, but maybe the cyanide poison that killed him wasn’t made from cherry pits at all. Unfortunately, cyanide isn’t too hard to come by.” I paused to pull the cherry pit I’d taken from the scene out of my pocket. “See how this pit looks remarkably clean—like it’s been washed and dried? Maybe Jeb was actually thinking of germinating these.”
“Then again, maybe not.” Tay inspected the pit through narrowed eyes. “I want to think your initial hunch about these pits was correct. Something about that crime scene doesn’t add up. Let’s keep poking around.”
We left the room and continued searching the building. I glanced into the walk-in refrigerators, which were empty, and walked into the store room where some of the lighter equipment was kept, including rows and rows of reusable ten-gallon containers and boxes of plastic liners. Next we poked our heads into the stockroom, which now only contained our private stock—all the cherries we used at the inn and what was sold in the shop. Nothing looked suspicious. We continued searching and then decided to split up. I would search Jeb’s office while Tay volunteered to poke around the employee break room and kitchen. Before she left, she asked, “So how’s it done?”
“Making cyanide from cherry pits? I was just reading about it on the way back from the morgue. Cherry pits don’t actually contain cyanide—they contain a substance called amygdalin. When a cherry pit is chewed or crushed, the amygdalin is released. This also isn’t a big deal on its own until the enzyme beta-d-glucose is released. It’s contained in the cherry pit too, and also in the digestive tract of humans. The beta-d-glucose enzyme breaks the amygdalin down into a couple of compounds, hydrogen cyanide being one of them. But the amount in one cherry pit is relatively small. One cherry pit won’t kill a person. That’s why maybe my theory is wrong. If somebody was going to make enough cyanide poison from cherry pits to kill a person, they’d need to use at least fifty, crush them, and suspend the mashed pits in spirits or some type of liquid.”
“Sounds like a lot of work. Then again, what better place to find a lot of cherry pits than at a cherry orchard.” Tay cast me a knowing look and started down the hallway. She paused long enough to add, “Did you know that historically, poison is considered to be a woman’s weapon?”
I stood before Jeb’s office, noting that the door was already open, and reached in to turn on the light. “Is it?” I answered. “I imagine that historically, poison was used by anyone who wanted to inflict an anonymous death. Think of the Borgias,” I called after her, and then stared at the scene before me. It felt surreal—a moment frozen in time, one of the last fleeting acts of Jeb Carlson’s life. The crime scene might have been in the orchard, but I had the feeling that it had all begun here.
On the desk was a typical working clutter of papers and bills, equipment catalogues, an open can of Coke, a golf magazine, and the black screen of a desktop monitor shut down for the day. And then there was the still-life violence of the scene: Jeb’s comfy leather high-back chair abandoned with haste against the wall, and on the cement floor a highball glass that had burst into jagged shards. Beneath it was a dark splatter mark that had all but dried, indicating that there must have be
en a little liquid still left in the glass when it was dropped. There was little doubt in my mind that whatever had been in that glass had likely killed him.
As I stared at the mess on the floor, Tay, from the vicinity of the break room, was still going on about the history of women and poison. I was only half-listening as I walked further into the office, careful not to touch anything. I recalled that Jack hadn’t been in this room yet. Last night he’d been too busy with the actual body, the hysterical guests, my frantic parents, and the bloody croquet mallet. Murder in Cherry Cove wasn’t a common affair, thank goodness, and poor Jack said he’d had a heck of a time getting the support he needed from Sturgeon Bay to properly investigate. I knew that eventually he would work his way around to the processing sheds, and I also knew that me coming here wasn’t going to sit well with him. It was a risk I was prepared to take, though, since this room confirmed the autopsy findings. Jeb Carlson had been poisoned here before he ran into the orchard. But by whom? How was it done?
I took out my iPhone and snapped a few pictures. That’s when I spotted the container on the other side of the desk. The lid was askew, showing the lip of a plastic liner. I left the broken glass to peer inside the box. I inhaled sharply. The box was full of clean, dried cherry pits—just like the ones found at the crime scene.
“Hey, Whit,” Tay called from the kitchen as I was snapping a few more pictures of the cherry pits. “You’re gonna want to take a look at this!”
I ran from the office, my heart racing with a painful, excited fear, and found Tay in the break room. She was staring into a garbage can. “What’s up?” I asked.
“You said one cherry pit isn’t enough to kill a man. How about a few hundred?”
“What?” I ran over to the garbage can. Scattered among the remains of food wrappers, water bottles, and a brown banana peel were a whole lot of what looked to be pulverized cherry pits. They looked damp, as if they’d been soaking for a while in some kind of liquid. Without thinking I reached in and scooped out a handful. Tay looked disgusted. It was disgusting. But I’d learned, in the few short hours since donning the hat of an amateur sleuth, that sometimes detective work required one to do disgusting things, like visiting a morgue or sift through break room garbage. I narrowed my eyes at her and sniffed the cherry pits. I was hit with the distinctive smell of rum.
