Killed on Blueberry Hill

by Sharon Farrow

  I found this incredible indeed, although it made sense. “What about Sloane?”

  “She gets the other half. After all, she’s the wife. But the rest belongs to my mom. Actually, she deserves all of it, but half is better than nothing.”

  Denise’s obvious confusion mirrored my own. “I didn’t think Porter and your mother got along,” she said.

  “They didn’t. But blood is thicker than water, Mom says. Too bad for Sloane. If Uncle Porter had lived longer, she might have gotten everything.”

  “Why would it have made any difference?” I asked.

  “Uncle Porter wrote in the will that if he and Sloane had children at the time of his death, his widow—and the mother of his children—would inherit everything. Sloane must be totally bummed she never got pregnant. Blueberry Hill would be all hers now if she had.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “I know. I couldn’t believe it when the lawyers read the will to us. This means me and Wyatt will inherit Blueberry Hill one day. Although I’ll need to find a way to stop my brother from screwing things up. I’ll have to take over things when I’m older.”

  Another generation of sibling rivalry over Blueberry Hill appeared well under way. “Do you know how much longer the lawyers will be here?”

  She shrugged.

  “Maybe we should do as you suggested, Marlee,” Denise said. “Let’s talk to Wyatt first. Once the lawyers have left, we can have this conversation with Wyatt and his parents.”

  “Please let your parents know we’re here,” I told Courtney. “And give them a heads-up about what we’ve come to discuss.”

  “Sure thing. I can’t wait to see what Dad does to Wyatt when he learns he’s still stealing.” She pointed at the grassy path that wound past several low-lying sheds. “If you go along there, you’ll bypass the U-Pickers.”

  “Thanks.” I waved at Courtney as she ran back to the house, her mass of coppery hair flying behind her.

  “What do you think of all that?” Denise raised a curious eyebrow in my direction.

  “I think Cara should be grateful Sloane never got pregnant. Only I wonder if she had an inkling of what was in the will. Maybe Porter said something to his sister. Or to Wyatt.” I followed the path along the sheds. “Do you think Sloane knew about the details of the will?”

  “Unlikely. If she had, she would have gotten pregnant as soon as possible.”

  I recalled my conversation with Cara the first day of the Blueberry Blow Out. “Cara told me that Sloane and Porter had been trying to have a child for months. Sloane was apparently upset about it.”

  “Any woman who wanted to be a mother would be upset.”

  “It could prove Sloane wanted a baby because she knew the terms of the will.” My frustration increased. “Or maybe she didn’t marry Porter only for his money. From all accounts, she’s taking his death hard. Sloane could be the innocent party in all this. I’m not so sure about Cara and Wyatt.”

  “A dark cloud surrounds every murder. It ends up affecting far more than the killer and the victim.” Denise sighed. “And it is possible no one in the family had anything to do with Porter’s death. The murder could have been committed by a business rival. You shouldn’t automatically assume a relative killed him.”

  “I’m trying not to assume anything.” I stopped, my attention drawn to the white plastic bags stacked along the wall of a nearby shed. I knelt down to examine them.

  “Why the interest in the bags?”

  “You might be interested as well.” I traced my finger along the bag’s green lettering. “They’re filled with potassium chloride.”

  * * *

  Luckily, the whirr of the motorized harvester drowned out my conversation with Denise as we approached the crew picking blueberries. “Bags of potassium chloride on the property doesn’t mean anyone here killed Porter,” Denise said. “It’s not an uncommon substance. My great-aunt had a potassium deficiency and used it in cooking instead of table salt. I even tasted it once.” She made a face. “I found it too bitter.”

  “Wyatt told me yesterday that it’s used in fertilizer.”

  “This is a blueberry farm. Makes sense the O’Neills keep a supply on hand.”

  “I don’t dispute that. But I’m not forgetting Cara and Wyatt had access to insulin vials, potassium chloride, and Porter Gale. Along with a motive to want him dead.”

  “Only if they knew about the will,” Denise said with emphasis. “I prefer to think someone outside the family did it.”

  Because Ryan may have wanted Porter dead as well, I disagreed. But I wasn’t going to drag my fiancé into the conversation. And we had now drawn the attention of the seven-man harvesting crew, who threw curious glances our way as we got closer.

  “I thought the berries were picked by hand,” Denise said.

  “Many smaller blueberry farms handpick their berry crop,” I explained, “but the acreage of the O’Neill farm requires a mechanized harvesting machine.” While some farms owned several harvesters, I knew the O’Neills rented a single harvester each August.

  Denise pointed at the driver visible atop the eleven-foot-tall machine. “How does he keep the bushes perfectly in line with the harvester?”

  “The driver sits high enough to see exactly where he needs to go, and the blueberry bushes are planted on slightly raised mounds. Also, normal speed for a harvester is no more than one mile per hour, which makes it easy to keep the vehicle on track, even after dark. On big farms like Blueberry Hill, the harvesters come equipped with lights to enable them to harvest at night.”

  We watched as the open center of the tall harvester drove over the bushes. Within the harvester, rotating rods methodically stripped the blueberries from the bushes.

  “Why does it look like some berries aren’t getting picked up?” Denise asked.

  “No matter how much the base of a plant is wired or trellised, some fruit will be lost. You lose less berries when you handpick with rakes, but the cost in labor and time is high. A big farm has to use a motorized harvester, which can pick ten thousand pounds of berries in one day. Even with a driver and crew, it’s intensive work.”

  At the moment, that didn’t seem to be the case for Wyatt and a young man in torn jeans and red T-shirt. Both of them stood talking on the rear deck of the harvester as the rest of the crew placed plastic containers known as “lugs” beneath chutes in order to catch the blueberries. This process occurred on either side of the harvester as a worker handed off filled lugs to other crew members, who sorted through the berries, tossing away unripened fruit and leaves.

  While the rest of the crew sorted berries and restacked lugs, Wyatt and the guy in the red T-shirt jumped off the deck. Once on the ground they huddled close, and I saw Wyatt pull something out of his jeans pocket and hand it to the other man. He, in turn, handed something over to Wyatt.

  I looked at Denise. “I hope we didn’t see a drug transaction.”

  She frowned. “I know the kid in the red shirt. His name is Lucas. He works part-time doing landscape work for the village with his dad. You’ve probably seen him. He handles the driving mower like it’s an Indy 500 car. This past spring, he got so reckless that he cut down the giant forsythia by the post office.”

  “If he’s buying drugs from Wyatt, it may explain why he’s so careless on the job.”

  “He’s looking a little unsteady right now,” she remarked as Lucas took a step back and stumbled. Wyatt grabbed him by the sleeve to keep him from toppling over. “And Wyatt doesn’t seem in a good mood.”

  “Is he ever? Besides, we can’t wait on Wyatt’s moods. We need to get all of us together with his parents and resolve this. I also want my two hundred dollars back.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Oh, I expect him to deny, deny, deny. But at least we’ll let him and his family know that he’s not fooling us.”

  Since Wyatt and Lucas stood in the cleared row between blueberry bushes that Denise and I walked along, they couldn’
t avoid seeing us headed straight for them. After giving his unsteady friend another shake, Wyatt marched over to meet us, his bare torso gleaming with sweat. I suspected it was less from exertion than the hot August sun overhead. As a true ginger with pale skin, he risked a severe sunburn by not wearing a shirt when working outdoors in summer. Then again, Wyatt O’Neill had never proven himself to be a practical young man.

  “What are you doing here?” he barked. “U-Pick’s on the other side of the farm.”

  “We’re not here for U-Pick. Denise and I need to talk to you. And your parents.”

  He wiped his sweaty palms against his faded, berry-stained jeans. “I don’t know what you have to say to me or my parents. And I don’t care. But you have no business being in the field while we’re harvesting.”

  “It’s the fastest way to speak to you,” I said. “Courtney is letting your parents know we’re here.”

  “Why the hell are you here?”

  “Because you stole two hundred dollars from me last night.”

  Panic flickered in his gaze for a second, before being replaced by scorn. “You’re crazy. I never took a dime from you.”

  “I’m not here to argue the point. I want my money back, Wyatt. And you need to admit to your parents that you stole it. I also want you to receive some counseling.”

  His laugh had a raw, mean tone to it. “Like I care about what you want.”

  “You already have a reputation as a thief,” I informed him. “You did community service after stealing from Brouwer Jewelry. And I know your mom paid off a liquor store in Berrien County last year after you stole from them. So don’t pretend you’re some innocent.”

  This sobered him. “Are you running around town asking questions about me?”

  “All I had to do was mention your name and some story about your dishonest behavior came up.” I shot him a hard look. “Like the time you stole a wallet from a lady’s purse during Holiday Open House at Oriole Glass.”

  He smirked. “Of course you’d believe the geisha glassblower.”

  My temper flared. “One more nasty word out of your mouth, and I’ll make sure everyone in town knows you’re a lying, drug-dealing thief.”

  Wyatt leaned toward me. “Be careful, Marlee. I could make your life much more unpleasant than you realize.”

  “Oh, really? And how do you think you’re—”

  Denise stepped between us. “Wyatt, it’s no use denying you stole from Marlee last night. Or that you tried to steal an expensive bracelet from my gallery last month.”

  He shook his head. “You’re as wacko as she is,” he told her. “I never took a thing from your stupid gallery. But I do remember you accused me of something I didn’t do. You’re lucky I didn’t go to the police to report how you harassed me.”

  “Enough with the pretense. You had the bracelet stuffed in your pocket.”

  “Try and prove it,” he said, and sneered. “Only you can’t. Take my advice. Don’t go on the warpath with me because you’ll lose, Pocahontas.”

  Denise flinched at his open contempt of her.

  “Shut up, Wyatt,” I said. “You’re caught and you know it.”

  She put a hand on my arm. “This is pointless, Marlee. He’s a liar and a thief.”

  “He sounds like a racist, too. But why should that surprise us? He’s dumber than a brick.”

  Wyatt swore at me as Denise sighed. “He’ll never admit to anything,” she said. “Let’s go back and talk to Cara and Brody. And maybe we should call the police as well.”

  “Tell the cops. You think they’re gonna arrest me for having a bracelet in my pocket a month ago? Get real. You didn’t even report it, Denise. Besides, I never actually walked out of the store with it.” He turned to me. “And how will you prove I took anything from your cashbox on the counter?”

  “I never mentioned the money went missing from the cashbox,” I said with disgust. “It could have gone missing from my register drawer. Of course, only the thief would know that.”

  “Like I told the Indian princess”—he gestured at Denise—“prove it.”

  “I’m done here.” Turning on her heel, Denise stalked off.

  “You’re such a pathetic loser, Wyatt,” I said.

  He chuckled. “You may as well join her. But if you go to the cops, I’ll tell them I was in your store last night because you forgot an entire box of Berry Basket stuff at the fairground. Now why should the cops trust the word of a woman who leaves behind merchandise belonging to her store?”

  “I’ll take my chances. After all, I’m not the one who’s been charged with theft before.”

  The two of us stared at each other for a tense moment as the sound of the approaching harvester grew louder. “You can’t prove anything,” he said finally. “Neither can your friends.”

  “Maybe not. But your parents need to be made aware of all this.”

  “Leave my family alone, Marlee. We got enough to deal with.”

  “Yes, I heard. Courtney told us about the will.”

  He lifted his chin in defiance. “It’s about time my family gets what they deserve.”

  “It looks like Porter thought Sloane deserved half of Blueberry Hill as well. Are you upset about that?”

  “Why would I be upset? Sloane was my uncle’s wife. It would have been fine with me if he’d left her everything.”

  “You are fond of Sloane.”

  “What of it? And you have no right to be here. You and your Indian scout buddy.”

  I shook my head at him. “Denise is right. It’s a waste of time talking to you.”

  He laughed. “You’re the one wasting your time with that boyfriend of yours.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There’s lots of stuff you don’t know about the guy you’re going to marry.”

  “Like what?”

  Turning away from me, Wyatt walked toward the harvester stripping blueberries from a nearby row. When he did so, I saw the large skull tattooed on his back that Courtney had told me about. I ran to catch up to him.

  “What don’t I know about Ryan?” I asked.

  He glanced over at me with a wily expression. “That he’s an even bigger loser than you accuse me of being.”

  “If you’re referring to the money he borrowed from the Gales, I already know.”

  “Bet you don’t know why he borrowed the money.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Why did Ryan need the money? Tell me!”

  “Who’s the pathetic one now?” Wyatt shook free of my grasp. “Get lost, Marlee.”

  Stunned, I watched as Wyatt went to meet Lucas, who seemed more off balance than before. Indeed, the young man walked along the path in so unsteady a manner, his shoulder kept brushing the blueberry bushes. A few yards behind, the harvester slowly made its way toward them. I wasn’t certain what was the matter with Wyatt’s friend, but he looked to be in no shape to be harvesting berries today. I didn’t feel in such great shape, either.

  Obviously Wyatt was trying to hurt me any way he could. Only why bring up Ryan at all? I didn’t think Ryan had ever exchanged more than five words with Wyatt. He’s lying, I told myself. After all, that’s what Wyatt does. But as I walked away, I fought back tears. The past few days had shaken my trust in Ryan, starting with his attack of Porter at the tug-of-war. The last thing I needed was someone else insinuating that Ryan might be keeping things from me. Because I could no longer deny that he was.

  I quickened my pace, eager to escape the sound of the harvester and Wyatt’s mocking presence. When I reached the end of the rows, I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Wyatt pull Lucas away from the bushes about to be harvested. I watched in alarm as Lucas suddenly doubled over.

  A moment later, Lucas fell right in the path of the harvester.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next few moments turned into a panicked blur of frenzied shouts and blueberries. By the time I raced over, the driver had stopped the harvester. Lucas had landed inside the open cente
r of the machine, which was bordered on either side by metal walls. As I batted away blueberry branches, I noticed a crew member speaking on his cell phone. Help would be on its way shortly.

  Three crew members, including Wyatt, reached inside to pull Lucas out. I winced to see the bloody scratches on his face, but I was more concerned that he appeared to be having a seizure. “How bad is he hurt?”

  The driver of the harvester, a brawny middle-aged man with a graying beard, grimaced. “I stopped in time. I would have felt it if the harvester had run over him. Aside from the branches scratching him when he fell, I don’t think he was injured by the harvester at all.”

  The crew lay Lucas down on the grassy path. The scratches along his face and arms appeared minor, but Lucas shook violently.

  “Does he suffer from epilepsy?” I asked.

  The crew either shrugged or shook their heads. One of them said, “I don’t think so. If he does, Lucas never told me about it and we grew up together.”

  I looked at Wyatt, who seemed frightened. “Wyatt, when Denise and I arrived, Lucas looked unsteady. Did he complain of feeling ill?”

  Rather than answer me, Wyatt pulled out his cell phone from his back jeans pocket and swiped at it. I took out my own cell and called Denise to let her know what had happened. With so many of us on our cells, it came as no surprise when EMS soon arrived. Because of the narrow space between the rows of bushes, they left their vehicle at the end of the row and hurried toward us with a wheeled gurney.

  “What happened?” one of them asked. His partner knelt beside the jerking body of Lucas and took his vitals.

  A chorus of bewildered answers greeted him. None of us really understood what had happened—with the possible exception of Wyatt.

  I repeated my observation that Lucas had appeared wobbly on his feet and how he doubled over right before he fell in front of the harvester. “He was with him.” I pointed at Wyatt.

  Shooting me a hate-filled look, Wyatt told the paramedic, “Lucas said he felt nauseous and hot. I thought it was sunstroke. Or maybe he’d had too much to drink last night. It wouldn’t be the first time.” He paused. “That’s why he and I jumped off the harvester. He looked shaky and I thought I’d better get him on solid ground.”