by Robin Allen
I tapped the lid I was sitting on. “Something similar seems to be going on here. That much cash doesn’t make sense at a private function, especially since you’re not taking tips tonight, so maybe there’s some other really good reason why you’ve got it.”
“I won a bet,” Randy said tersely.
I nodded. That was a good explanation, but the money could be a diversion from what he really had hidden inside—a bottle of food-grade hydrogen peroxide or OxyGrowth and a clear glass measuring cup. I had to see inside that cooler again.
“I’m not going to involve myself with your gambling activities,” I said, “but the health department is concerned that this ice is contaminated and is the possible cause of Dana’s illness.”
Randy snorted a laugh. “Dana was EMSed out of here because of food poisoning? Sherwood told me it’s her heart.” He smiled at Colin. “Not that she has one.” Colin looked away.
I stood and picked up a fresh plastic cup from the table. “I need to take a sample, and you’ll need to set aside any open bottles of wine that were in the cooler, then dump the ice.”
“No open wine has been in there, and I didn’t poison Dana,” Randy said. He took the plastic cup out of my hand, opened the cooler only as far as necessary to insert the cup, then dragged it through the slush of water and ice. In a real investigation, I would have taken the sample myself.
Randy closed the lid and handed the wet cup to me. “We won’t serve this ice,” he said.
“Code requires that you dump it.”
He snatched the handle of the cooler and rolled it to the end of the bar. “I think I can handle it,” he said when he saw that I intended to follow him.
“I need to watch you do it,” I said.
Even though I was the one with the badge backed by the authority of the city of Austin, the county of Travis, and the state of Texas, Randy wanted confirmation from his new sales rep. Colin shrugged and nodded.
“This is ridiculous,” Randy said. “I said I’ll dump it. You don’t have to shadow me.”
If I had a strand of linguine for every time I have heard someone tell me they could be trusted to destroy potentially hazardous food, I could feed every capo in the mafia three meals a day for a year. In truth, people can’t be trusted with a lot of things, but especially to destroy consumables and especially at a later time. A lot of things can happen between now and when they get around to it—a memory lapse, a shift change, a justification that it won’t hurt anyone this one time. A lot of my job involves babysitting adults.
I said, “Let’s dump it in the sink in the washing shed to make sure we don’t accidentally contaminate any crops here at the farm.”
Randy didn’t have an obvious reaction to my mention of the washing shed, but he was already upset, so I wouldn’t have noticed any subtle change in the essence of his anger. He towed the cooler across the grass, glancing back at me every two feet as I escorted him through the Field.
When we reached the archway, I turned and looked for Jamie. He stood by the dance floor talking to Mindy, Ursula, and Nina, but watched me, wondering, no doubt, why I was leaving the Field with Randy and a cooler full of who knows what. I gave Jamie an exaggerated wink to gloat a little. Jamie had a feeling Randy was hiding something; I had the something Randy was hiding.
If Randy really had won a bet, did it have something to do with the Friends election? And was it relevant to Dana’s death? It looked like a few thousand dollars in $20 bills—not an insignificant amount. Randy could have bet against himself in order to win the money and then … no, that made no sense. If the person Randy made the bet with knew that Randy bet against himself, that person would have also known Randy would throw the election. Or was that the idea? Who was invested enough in Dana’s win to do something like that? And why make it a bet? Why not a bribe? And since the winner of the money was here tonight, the loser of the bet had to be here, too.
Or! I had seen blood money Randy intended to pay to a third party to kill Dana, and I was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Once we reached the plywood walkway, the cooler rolled easier and Randy moved faster. Drew still manned his post in front of the kitchen, talking on his cell phone, or pretending to. He had his back to us while facing in the direction of the office, but he turned when he heard the rumble from the cooler’s wheels. He took a step toward us, but I shook my head and he stayed put.
“Where are you going?” I asked Randy when he tried to zoom past the washing shed.
He stopped and dropped his shoulders before wheeling the cooler around and onto the dirt floor to the sink.
“It’s just ice,” I said to him as much as to myself. I wouldn’t have played this hand and made him dump any product if his losses affected profits. I also would have used a foodborne illness kit and collected samples into sterile bottles rather than a plastic cup. “Why are you getting your nose out of joint?”
“I have a new sales rep who isn’t ready to be left alone, and I already told you we weren’t using this ice.”
I knew that his first nose-disjointing reason was a lie because Jamie heard Randy tell Colin that he wanted to leave early. As for the second reason, “Why bring all that ice to the party if you’re not going to use it?”
“We’re not going to use it now, not after you told us not to.”
I pointed to the sink. “Need some help lifting the cooler?”
“You can go,” he said. “I’m here. I’m going to do it.”
I still held the sample cup of ice I had carried from the Field, and set it on the counter. “Do you want me to hold the bag of money?”
Out of his mouth came a pained growl as he untucked his shirt. He put himself between me and the cooler with his back to me, then lifted the lid and put the money in his waistband. “Ach!” he cried.
“What’s wrong?”
“Cold.”
Randy maneuvered the cooler closer to the counter, then used a small white plastic bucket to scoop ice into the sink. He seemed to be in a much better mood all of a sudden. The only thing that had changed in the last few seconds, however, was that I could no longer see the bag of money. Why would that matter? I had already seen it once, knew it existed, so he must be hiding something else. Not wanting to miss him sticking other items in his waistband, like peroxide or OxyGrowth, I moved to the other side of the cooler to help.
I turned on the hot water tap to make the ice melt faster, but before it got too hot, I squeezed the sink’s spray nozzle and “accidentally” squirted a stream of water at Randy’s face and shoulders.
He dropped the bucket into the cooler and jumped back. “What is wrong with you!”
“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t know she was loaded.”
When he pulled up his shirttail to wipe his face, I bent down to dredge the bottom of the cooler with the bucket and get another peep at the money. I saw printing on the bag, something colored green, blue, and brown.
It wasn’t the money Randy didn’t want me to get a closer look at—it was that bag.
Thirteen
“Happy now?” Randy asked as he dropped his shirt and slammed the lid on the cooler. Again, the aggressive intent of finality was there, but not the effect.
“The health department asks that you sterilize the cooler before you put it into service,” I said.
“Anything else?” he asked, white-knuckling the handle.
“I’m curious about something.”
“No, I won’t give your stepmother a ride to Hyde Park.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Her table is right next to my bar.”
“What I want to know is, what happens if Dana can’t fulfill her duties as president of the Friends?”
“Whoever she chose as vice president and treasurer,” he said. “If she wants the job.”
“She? Do you
know who it is?”
“I assume it’s a she. Dana White hates men.” Randy rolled the cooler forward. “Now, if it pleases the health department, I’m going back to my bar.”
“Thank you for your cooperation,” I said, then checked the time on my phone. A little after 8:00 PM. If I wanted to solve this mystery tonight, I needed to expedite my investigation by keeping both of my assets employed in covert operations. I stepped out of the washing shed and looked to the left, but Drew was gone. Either he had caught the trail of whoever was in the office, or his cover had been blown and he aborted the mission.
I would have to dispatch Jamie, who, last time I saw him, was doing nothing more consequential than engaging in girl talk with Ursula, Nina, and Mindy. However, if Jamie thought he was helping me meddle, he might refuse the assignment. But not even Mindy Cornhusker could keep him by her side if he was chasing a story.
I called his cell phone. “Did you get Ursula to confess to killing Dana?” I asked when he answered.
“Not yet,” Jamie said, “but I’m looking at Randy Dove coming through the archway, and he looks rattled.”
“You were right that he’s hiding something. Come on up to the washing shed and I’ll tell you.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“Something important with Mindy?”
“Not really,” he said, quickly switching modes from businessman to boyfriend. “Give me two minutes.”
I poured the sample cup of ice and water down the drain because I had never intended to have it tested. It was one thing to waste Randy’s time, but I wouldn’t waste the state lab’s resources.
Jamie’s two minutes turned into five, which turned out to be good because Colin Harris came through the archway, chin buried in his chest, his strides long and hard against the plywood. Jamie followed a few steps behind him. Colin went past the kitchen, then me, then the office. Was he leaving? No, no, no, he couldn’t leave.
I rushed out to meet Jamie and rapid-fired my intel. “Randy is hiding a bag of money in his cooler. Colin saw it, but didn’t seem to know about it. Randy said Dana doesn’t have a heart and looked at Colin when he said it.” I pointed at the parking lot. “Colin is leaving.”
Even though Jamie was dying to pump me for money details, and I was dying to know what kind of conversation he could have possibly been having with that coven, I had handed him an enticing lead on a story that was now time-sensitive and he was activated.
“Ursula wants to talk to you,” Jamie said as he turned to follow Colin.
I nodded that I heard him, but Ursula was last in line. First in line was the bottle of food-grade hydrogen peroxide missing from the freezer and the bottle of OxyGrowth missing from the storage pantry, either of which was hopefully with Dana’s measuring cup. And if I didn’t find something to eat soon, I was going to take to the herb garden and start grazing on rosemary.
At the thought of sustenance, my stomach grumbled, and I remembered the CSA boxes full of freshly washed vegan offerings. The washing demo … of course! That’s why the peroxide wasn’t in the freezer. Brandon and Cory had used it to wash the vegetables. So what did they do with it afterward?
It wouldn’t hurt to sift through the boxes while I was in the vicinity.
They rested side by side on the pallet on the dirt floor. Two of them. Brandon told me Cory had stayed behind after the demo to make up more boxes. Cory said he made a couple before Ian called him to help mend the fence. “A couple” can be anywhere from two to five, but there were definitely only the original two. No more.
Cory was racking up the circumstantial evidence against him. I knew I should be impartial, but I couldn’t help wishing it was Kevin who had poisoned Dana.
And then I realized that I had been so focused on corroborating my suspicions, I hadn’t given any thought to what it would mean to solve Dana’s murder. It meant that someone I knew—had known for years—killed her. I had to suspect not just hardheaded Brandon and sweet Cory, but prickly Kevin, generous Perry and Megan who opened their hearts and their farm to strangers every day, hard-working Ian and Tanya who were mostly responsible for the growth of the farm, and talented Bjorn who had doubled the farm’s prepared food sales.
Identifying one of them as the killer would take them off the farm, out of the world, forever.
Just like one of them had done to Dana.
Personal relationships have never swayed me as a health inspector, and they wouldn’t sway me now. If the Girl Scouts awarded a Dirtbag Takedown badge, I was going to earn it.
And I would have to hurry. The night was getting on, and people like Colin who didn’t live at the farm would eventually leave, so I didn’t have the leisure of questioning people in my own time, and I didn’t want to drive all over tarnation the next day, making up some excuse for wanting to talk to people I had seen the night before. I still needed to ask Dana’s cooks whether they saw Randy or Mike Glass in the kitchen, and talk to Mike to determine if he had a beef with Dana. Jerry Potter, too—find out for myself what confidences were worth twenty bucks to Jamie.
I opened one of the boxes and saw the demo veggies of onion, peppers, and broccoli, but no peroxide. Same thing with the other box. I slid the boxes to the other end of the wooden pallet and peered through the slats in case evidence had fallen through. I thought I saw something in the dirt near the corrugated metal wall and reached around to pull my flashlight out of my inspector’s backpack, forgetting my civilian status that night. No backpack, so no flashlight.
I looked around to make sure that no one had become interested in me, then flipped open my phone and shined the dim light between the slats. Something caught the light, but my arm wasn’t long enough to reach it. I dropped to my knees on the pallet, tensing at the rough wood biting into the tender peroxide welts, stuck my butt in the air, and snaked my hand between the slats.
I was groping around for the item when a man said, “I didn’t know there was a full moon tonight.”
I jerked my hand back. “Tre-vor!”
“Don’t get up for me, darlin’,” he said.
I lifted up to sit on my heels, but they landed on the edge of the pallet, sending me bakery over biscuits to the dirt floor, which made me decide to never wear a skirt again.
“What are you doin’?” he asked, extending his hand.
“Yoga,” I said, as he yanked me up to standing. “Puppy pose. It’s good for the back.”
Trevor turned me around and began dusting off my shoulders. “Looks like you were tryin’ to grab hold of something.”
“I can do the rest,” I said, dusting off my fanny. “I saw something shiny in the dirt.”
Trevor moved the CSA boxes to the dirt floor then lifted up the pallet.
I could have done that.
I moved closer to the wall and shined my phone along the edge. I picked up a coin about the size of a half dollar. Not money, though. A cheap gold disc with “1 Day at a Time” printed on one side and “24 Hours” on the reverse. It had other words and images, but I couldn’t make them out.
Trevor replaced the pallet on the floor. “What is it?” he asked.
“Looks like kid’s play money,” I said, handing it to him.
“This is an AA medallion,” he said. “For newcomers who’ve stayed sober twenty-four hours.”
I tilted my head and looked up at him.
“Not me,” he said. “My parents. It’s what killed my dad.”
“I’m so sorry, Trevor.”
“It was a long time ago.” He handed the coin to me. “Anyway, that’s what it is.”
“Sorry to bum you,” I said. “What are you doing out here, any-
way?”
“I’m on my way back to the matchmakin’ drama,” he said to me, then to a Goth-looking guy passing down the walkway, “Thanks for the smokes, dude. Catch you later.”
“Smokes plural?” I asked.
Trevor ran both hands through his shoulder-length blond hair, bunched it into a ponytail, then let it go. “They’re like potato chips,” he said.
“Ursula’s going to smell it on you.”
“Only if she kisses me, which she won’t do with her mama around,” he said. “I know what I’m doin’.”
“Did you see a protein bar in my backpack?”
“This thing?” Trevor reached into his front pocket and pulled out a silver wrapper. “Tasted like cardboard.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “But you finished it anyway.”
He shrugged. “We missed dinner.”
When he left, I considered the medallion. Other than Jerry’s highly suspect assertion that Dana drank vodka for breakfast, I hadn’t heard any rumors in that vein about her. Even if she had a problem and was seeking professional help, it seemed unlikely that she would bring the coin with her to the party.
Bjorn said he hadn’t had a drink in six years, so was Brandon or Cory a newly recovering alcoholic? Or someone else at the farm? It could belong to anyone, of course. A lot of people had crowded into the washing shed during the demo, not a few of them without substance abuse issues. It could also have been dropped much earlier, but it didn’t have dirt on top of it, so I didn’t think it had been there very long.
I couldn’t figure an immediate correlation between alcoholism and cold-blooded murder or between alcoholism and Randy’s money, but I saved the coin in my pocket in case it became relevant later.
I was so hungry, I could have eaten a sink full of half-thawed tobacco-marinated scallops. If I ate broccoli from the CSA box, I would mess up someone’s delivery, so I went to the kitchen to demand food from Dana’s cooks. I had paid for dinner, darn it. Well, Mitch had. But a meal had been purchased for me, and I wanted it.
