Danger Cove Farmer's Market 02 - A Slaying in the Orchard

by Gin Jones

  I reached the entrance of the parking lot without seeing Fields. I would have enlisted the traffic officer to back me up, but he'd apparently been reassigned somewhere else, since the parking lot was virtually empty except in the far corner where all of the vendors' vehicles were congregated. I couldn't even borrow one of the dogs from the Second Chance Animal Rescue, since the volunteers had packed up their cages and left already.

  Now what? I could either keep looking for backup while a possible killer got away, or I could go find Keith and talk him into staying until Fields returned my call.

  Fields could be anywhere between Two Mile Beach and the parking lot, and I needed to do something right now. I couldn't simply tell Keith he had to stick around to be interviewed by the police, tipping him off to my suspicions, but perhaps I could slow him down with some last-minute paperwork. I didn't actually require any exit paperwork from the vendors, but since he obviously hadn't read any of the information in his packet, he wouldn't know that.

  I pulled up an old document on my phone—one of many to-do lists I'd drafted when I'd been studying the role of a market manager—and made a few quick adjustments to it before renaming it "EndOfDay." That done, I headed for the far corner of the lot where vendors were supposed to park. I was reasonably sure Keith would have followed that rule, since it was printed in big bold letters on the parking form he'd filled in with his license plate number before I gave him the certificate that approved his space at the market. Just in case he'd missed it in the paperwork, I'd personally told Keith that the parking forms would be given to the police department, and the officers were vigilant about ticketing any vendor outside the assigned area. If Keith had gotten a ticket, I doubted he'd have taken it quietly, and I would have heard about it from him.

  A few minutes later I found Keith in the outermost row of spaces just as he closed the hatchback of an SUV parked facing out. I called his name, and he came forward to stand behind the open driver's door, slipping out of his backpack and tossing it onto the front passenger seat.

  "Sorry to bother you," I said, aiming for a light tone. "I just noticed you were packing up, and I didn't want to take the chance of missing you when you made your final trip to get your canopy and the rest of what's in your space."

  "I won't be back, so you can keep the canopy." Keith put one foot on the running board of the SUV. "The rest is garbage."

  "I'd appreciate it if you'd cart it out of here," I said. "You wouldn't want to lose the security deposit you gave the town."

  He continued up and into the driver's seat. "It's worth it. I only paid like fifty bucks. My buddy got the rest waived."

  In other circumstances I'd have snapped at his arrogance, but I needed to remain calm and not let him see how desperate I was to keep him from leaving.

  "Still, I need you to sign the closing documents before you leave. No one but me can waive that requirement." Especially since I'd just made it up. As long as I was fabricating a story, I might as well go all the way. "If you don't sign, you won't be able to have a space here in the future. Or any other market within a couple of hundred miles. There's an association of market managers, and we keep a blacklist."

  Keith sighed melodramatically. "Show me this document."

  "It's in the packet of materials you got, but if you don't have it with you, you can read it on my phone." I pulled up the document again and went to stand between him and the open door to hand him my phone. "We need to go back to the first aid tent to print it though, for you to sign."

  He took the phone and scrolled through the document. "I don't remember seeing this."

  There was a lot in the packet he hadn't remembered, judging by his conduct. "That's okay. It's my job to remember things. If you'll just follow me back to the first aid tent."

  "You've had it in for me since the very beginning, haven't you?" Despite his irritation Keith gave me back the phone and reached over to snag his backpack and step out of the SUV. "You and your stupid rules and your suspicion of anyone who isn't a lifelong member of your inbred little cult of a town."

  The irony of his believing that I was an insider here in Danger Cove amused me enough to take the edge off my irritation. He could complain all he wanted as long as he came back to the first aid tent with me now.

  He slipped something out of the backpack and into the front right pocket of his pants before tossing the pack into the SUV and slamming the front door shut.

  I'd stepped back toward the rear of the SUV as Keith had come out of the vehicle, which I realized belatedly might have been a mistake. If he figured out that I suspected him of murder, I was in a vulnerable position, trapped in the space between his SUV and the truck in the adjoining space. Instead of blocking him from leaving, which had been my original plan, now I was at risk of being kept here against my will.

  It struck me then just how isolated Keith and I were, with the wide, mostly empty expanse between the parking lot's entrance and this corner of it. I couldn't see anyone else in the entire area, not even on Cliffside Drive or across the street at the renovated cannery building. Most of the marketgoers had left already, the vendors were packing up, and it would be another hour or two before people arrived for the bonfires. Surrounded as I was by tall, blocky trucks, vans, and SUVs, I was practically invisible and inaudible to anyone who wasn't within a few feet of me.

  I estimated it would be another ten or fifteen minutes before any of the vendors headed this way with their leftover inventory and setups. A lot could happen in that time.

  For once I wished the regular vendors weren't so good at following my rules.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was tempting to just make a run for it, although it was no longer that simple. With Keith blocking the fairly narrow exit space between his SUV on my right and the truck on my left, it would be difficult to squeeze past him even if he weren't trying to stop me. And if he did want to stop me, his athletic build suggested I wouldn't have a chance of eluding him.

  I couldn't run in the opposite direction, behind the SUV and toward Cliffside Drive, because there was a fence around the parking lot. If I tried to run around to the passenger side of the SUV, I would be in much the same position as I was on the driver's side, since there was a van parked in the adjoining space, and Keith could easily run the shorter distance around the front of his vehicle to block me again.

  I couldn't stop him from leaving, and now it seemed like I might not be able to leave myself.

  My only real option was to pretend I didn't suspect him of anything and just try to stay out of his reach long enough for one of the vendors to arrive and provide some backup until Fred Fields returned my call. I wished I could call on Sargent Adams, but he was probably bivouacking at the historical garden for the remainder of the weekend to guard his cucurbits.

  Despite my lack of backup, I had to keep Keith from leaving. As Sweetwater would have said, "Someone should do something." That someone was me, and I was going to do whatever I could to make sure Keith remained available for questioning by the police.

  "So," I said, trying not to acknowledge that I was feeling the menace radiating from him, "are you ready to go up to the first aid tent now?"

  "I'm not going anywhere with you." Keith turned sideways to lean against the side of the SUV and gesture for me to pass in front of him and around to the passenger side door. "You, however, are coming for a ride with me."

  He probably saw the fear on my face as I took an involuntary step away from him. Fortunately, like my great-great-great-grandmother, I had a great deal of experience with quashing panic and continuing to do whatever I had to do without falling apart until the crisis was over. My voice sounded much calmer than I felt. "I'm afraid I don't have time for anything except the end-of-day routine right now. Perhaps we could meet up somewhere later in the week if you want to discuss how you were treated at the market this weekend."

  "I'm done with discussing things." Keith pulled a folding utility knife out of his pocket and locked the blade
in place. "I never did like to talk things to death. If I'm going to kill something, I'm going to do it with action."

  I tried not to look at the knife. I might not be particularly susceptible to panic, but there were limits to my unflappability, and staring at the likely cause of my demise was too much even for me.

  "Killing me won't change anything. I already told Detective Ohlsen what I know." I considered adding that the police were on their way, but that might just provoke Keith into quicker action when what I needed to do was slow things down. I waited silently, pretending a patience I didn't feel.

  "The cops can't prove anything," Keith said. "Not if you disappear."

  "You don't need to do anything rash." I let the strap of my sling bag slide down my arm and then held the bag against my chest like a shield. The contents might not reliably deflect a knife blade, but it was packed sufficiently full that it might offer enough resistance to turn a fatal attack into something survivable. "I'm sure Henry's death was just an accident. Everyone knows what a jerk he was, and they'd understand that he provoked you into grabbing his chisel and stabbing him."

  Keith snorted. "You might believe that story, but the cops won't. Not when they figure out all the planning I had to do in order to kill the interfering old man."

  Keith didn't strike me as someone who was a natural planner. "Henry was killed by his own chisel. How much planning did that take?"

  "Plenty." Keith straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the SUV and took a step in my direction. "Using the chisel on him was a last-minute substitution. I got this knife to kill him, but then he waved that chisel at me, and it seemed like too good an opportunity to ignore. I knocked it out of his hand and then scooped it up and turned it on him. But there was a lot of planning involved before that. I had to get two matching shirts, so if the first one got bloody, I could replace it with another one after the deed was done. And they had to be distinctive shirts, which I could cover with something innocuous while I was stalking Henry, so if I was seen with him, no one would connect the guy in the bland shirt with the guy in the school colors. I even had to get a trade-show-style banner made so I could nip behind it to put on the boring shirt. Do you know how much it costs to get something like that made as a rush job?"

  Even with all my experience as a planner, I wasn't sure I could have come up with a better murder plan than Keith had. "You must have disposed of the bloody clothes by now, so there's no evidence against you."

  "I couldn't just dump them," he said irritably. "I was going to burn them on the bonfire last night, but then I found out that all they were doing yesterday was building the piles, not lighting them, so I had to wait to get rid of the evidence. I couldn't risk dumping it anywhere in this theatrical stage of a town. Someone would have found the bloody clothes or seen me do it no matter where I dumped them. I kept them close at hand, where no one else would ever look as long as they didn't figure out who I am."

  I forced myself not to look toward the front seat of the SUV where Keith had thrown his backpack that I now suspected had held all his preparations before the murder and then the bloody evidence afterwards. No wonder he hadn't been willing to take the thing off during the market, not even in the hottest hours of the day.

  "You've got time to get out of town and burn everything," I said. "As long as you leave right now. Once you're gone, it won't much matter what the local cops think. As long as you have a decent head start, they'll never catch you. I'm sure that part of your planning was to prepare for the possibility that you'd have to go underground after this weekend."

  Keith shrugged. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I had to kill Henry to keep him from telling the cops what he knew about me and my sister and how to find Mom, but I expected to get it done fast and disappear again. Then no one would ever be able to finger us for giving Mom's worse half what he deserved. Except for Sweetpants, I suppose, but he never does anything to fix anything."

  I should have known Jim Sweetwater was involved somehow. He must have recognized Keith as Louise Palmer's son from when he'd been in the local high school, but held back the information for some reason known only to him. Detective Ohlsen wasn't going to be happy when I told him about it. Assuming I was alive to tell him about it.

  "Sweetwater may not have done anything yet, but he won't be silent if something happens to me," I said. "All he has to do is tell the police you're the person they've been looking for in the investigation into your stepfather's death, and they'll come to the same conclusions I did. No point in making me disappear as long as Sweetwater's still around."

  "Old Sweetpants won't say anything to the cops, because he knows it will come back to bite him," Keith said. "How do you think I knew that Henry Atwell would be at the market this weekend? I tried to talk to the old man at his house the day after the body was found, and he was hiding from me. So I talked to my friend at town hall, and he told me to call my old guidance counselor if I wanted to know how to get to Henry. Sweetpants may not do anything useful with the stuff he knows, but he does know everything about everyone in town, and he's more than happy to spill his guts to anyone who asks."

  "Including to the police," I said, not feeling any qualms whatsoever about possibly putting Sweetwater at risk. He deserved it. He should have passed on what he knew about Louise Palmer's son as soon as he heard the police were looking for him. "He's been saying all weekend that he was going to solve the crime himself. Probably by implicating you."

  "He wasn't going to tell the cops about me," Keith said with enough confidence that I believed him. Or at least believed that he believed what he was saying. "He's been helping me. No one had time to wonder about me while he was accusing other people of having means, motive, and opportunity."

  Sweetwater had been interviewing people aggressively, but much as I'd like to attribute bad intent to him, I couldn't be sure he'd known he was creating a distraction. More likely, helping Keith had only been an unintended consequence of Sweetwater's actions. Strutting around ineffectively while pretending to be doing something useful was his normal modus operandi.

  "Why would he help you get away with murder?"

  "Because he likes to stir things up," Keith said. "Me and my sister both had the same experience with him when we moved to Danger Cove. He made a big deal out of having to help us adjust to the new school, but then he gave us bad information so we'd make fools of ourselves, just so he could say 'I told you they were screw-ups.' And then he claimed we needed even more of his so-called guidance. He doesn't care about the kids at the school. He only cares about his own reputation as a do-gooder."

  That did sound like the Sweetwater I'd seen in action, but I found it hard to believe he'd have intentionally let a dangerous criminal escape. Not just any criminal either, but a serial killer. "Did Sweetwater know you'd killed your stepfather?"

  Keith shrugged. "I don't know. I think mostly he just wanted to see what would happen when me and Henry came face to face. I bet he was really disappointed when you made me move out of the space across from WoodWell so he wouldn't have a front-row seat for the entertainment. But the new location was even better for my plans. It was easy to sneak around the first aid tent and go up behind the stalls. I knew that if anyone saw me, I could just pretend I was on the way to the porta-potties. But I got lucky, and I didn't even have to get Henry out of his space. He was right there in front of me when I came around the first aid tent. Stupid old man, threatening me with exposure if I didn't turn myself in to the cops. He knew where Mom's nursing home is, and even if we moved her, it would have been easy for the cops to find her again, and then they'd find me and my sister. Henry said I owed it to my mother to do the right thing, that she wouldn't have wanted me to kill anyone."

  "Henry was right." I thought Etta would be proud of her grandfather if I got the opportunity to tell her what he'd said.

  "You're both stupid," Keith said. "My mother's got dementia and doesn't even recognize me and my sister. And if she could remember what he
r life with her second husband was like, she'd tell us we did the right thing. Both times. We had to get rid of Ryan so Mom could have a decent life without his bullying her any longer. And she would want me and my sister to have a good life too, so she'd understand why we had to kill Henry. Especially since Henry was as mean to her as her husband was. They both deserved to die."

  "Maria Dolores! Maria Dolores! Where are you?" Cary's voice announced his imminent arrival.

  He hadn't seen me yet, but it was only a matter of time, and then he'd be dangerously close to Keith and the utility knife.

  Even as I thought it, Cary came into sight. "There you are! I told Merle Curtis I could find you. I can find anyone."

  Keith's face darkened.

  No. I couldn't let Keith do anything to Cary.

  "Run!" I shouted. "Find Fred Fields and tell him Keith killed Henry."

  Cary hesitated.

  "Run!" I repeated. "You can find anyone. Find Fred Fields."

  Cary took off, shouting the officer's name, and Keith turned to follow him.

  "Leave him alone," I shouted, hoping to delay Keith. "He doesn't know anything. I'm the one you need to worry about."

  Keith paused briefly, but I saw his muscles tense as he prepared to launch himself forward.

  I changed my hold on the sling bag to grab it by the strap, leaned my right shoulder back to create some momentum and then swung the overstuffed bag as hard as I could at Keith's head.

  It hit with a heavier thunk than I'd expected, thanks to the rolls of coins that I'd forgotten about, and startled Keith into dropping his knife. As I dove to get it from the ground, he stumbled over to lean against the truck in the next parking space. He looked a little dazed, but he wasn't down completely. I only had a moment to get away before he came back to his senses.