Farmed and Dangerous

by Edith Maxwell

  Cam gazed at Pete. She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand.

  He listened to more of the transmission until it returned to static. He turned a knob and reduced the volume.

  “This isn’t good,” he muttered.

  “I know it isn’t. That address is Moran Manor.” Cam’s heart thudded in her chest. “What if it’s Uncle Albert?”

  Pete gazed into Cam’s face. “Any idea what a code seventy-nine is?”

  “None.”

  “Unattended deaths must be checked out every time. Code seventy-nine means there is also a report of suspicious behavior.”

  “You mean murder,” she whispered.

  Chapter 6

  “I need to call Uncle Albert.” Cam glanced at the clock. “It’s almost seven. He’s probably still at dinner. But what if—” Her throat thickened. Tears threatened to fill her eyes. Her emotional ties to her great-uncle were stronger than to her own parents.

  “I’m sure it’s not him, Cam.” Pete put his arms around her for a moment. “But why don’t you call, anyway?” He stood and paced to the window and back, his brow furrowed.

  Cam picked up her bag and dug out her cell phone. She took a deep breath, wiped her cheeks, pressed Albert’s number. His line rang six times and then went to voice mail. “Albert, please call me as soon as you get this message,” she said, trying to keep the worry out of her voice. She disconnected and remained standing.

  Pete paced some more.

  Cam watched him. “If it’s murder, you’ll be investigating, right?” She clutched the phone.

  “I have to wait for them to call me. The Westbury department responds first, but as you know, they’re too small to be able to muster sufficient resources.”

  “To investigate a murder. So they call the state police. I know. I sort of wish I didn’t.” If someone had been murdered, it would be the third time in a year in the small town. At least this death didn’t have anything to do with her farm. Unless . . . the person died from eating her produce. Then it absolutely involved her.

  “I need to go to Moran Manor.” She slung her bag over her shoulder as she glanced at the door. “Everybody there ate my produce for dinner. What if something was spoiled?”

  “You won’t be able to do anything there, and they probably wouldn’t even let you in. Let’s finish our dessert.” He reached for her hand and led her to the table.

  Cam only picked at hers. “It’s delicious. But I’m so worried about Albert, I can’t really enjoy it. I’m sorry.”

  “Cameron, I’m the one who’s sorry. I wanted us to have a quiet, intimate night.” He covered her hand with his. “But that phone’s going to ring any minute now, and when it does, I’m out of here.”

  When they were done, he fixed small, sweet Greek coffees. They sat on the couch to drink them. Cam laid her phone carefully on the coffee table. She took one sip from her cup and set it down.

  “That’s fabulous. But I’ll never sleep if I finish it.”

  Pete nodded. “That’s sort of my plan. And I’ll drink yours, too.” His knee jittered up and down.

  Cam’s stomach roiled. Why hadn’t Albert returned her call?

  “Maybe the Westbury police decided the behavior wasn’t suspicious, after all,” she said. “Maybe a ninety-three-year-old simply died in her sleep, unattended.”

  Her phone rang. She picked it up from the table and fumbled to connect, dropping it in the process. Pete retrieved it for her in one swift scoop. She pressed SEND just in time.

  “Cameron?”

  She closed her eyes in gratitude. “Uncle Albert. I’m so glad you’re all right.”

  “Of course I am. I was at dinner. I do eat dinner every day, my dear.”

  “We—” She opened her eyes again at Pete’s tapping her arm.

  He shook his head with a quick move.

  “I heard some commotion here tonight, though,” Albert said. “An ambulance took someone away. Not certain who. I saw Ruthie Dodge, too. Now, why did you call? Is everything all right with you?”

  “I’m fine. I wanted to—” Cam racked her brain. “To say what a good time I had playing Scrabble with you and Marilyn this afternoon. She seems sweet. And smart.”

  “She’s quite the gal, I agree. We’ve taken to dining together every evening. You’ll join us sometime soon, I hope.”

  “Of course.”

  “The dinner tasted fine, by the way. Very nice winter stew, excellent stuffed squash. Not many residents partook of the salad, but Marilyn and I very much enjoyed it. The almonds in it were a nice touch. And the apple-almond cake? A perfect ending.”

  “I forgot to even ask. I’m glad it went well. The cook must have decided to throw in the almonds on the salad. Nonlocal ones, of course.”

  “I should think the residence will want to buy from you regularly once the season gets under way. But that’s not my decision, of course.”

  “Thanks. Well, good night, Uncle Albert.”

  He said good night and disconnected.

  “Sorry. Rules of conduct.” Pete let out a heavy breath. “Don’t share scanner news with civilians. Which you are.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “It won’t be easy hanging out with me, Cam. You might want to reconsider this, whatever we’re doing.”

  “I quite like this whatever.” Cam snuggled into his arm. The poor soul at Moran Manor wasn’t Albert or, apparently, Marilyn. Cam’s jitters were gone. She noticed that Pete’s weren’t. His work still loomed.

  “He didn’t know who died, I gather?” he asked.

  “No. He said an ambulance had taken someone away. Oh, and that Ruth Dodge is there.”

  He nodded. “She must be the officer on duty tonight. You’re friends with her. Remind me how you know her.”

  “I spent every summer with Great-Aunt Marie and Great-Uncle Albert. I stayed with them on the farm from the time I was six until I went off to college. Ruth grew up nearby, and we played together all summer long. Playing when we were teenagers involved hanging out at Salisbury Beach and hunting for boys, of course, and getting in various kinds of minor trouble.”

  “Minor trouble?”

  Cam snorted. “I was the foolish geek, and she was the clown, but a sensible clown who kept our trouble to the minor sort.”

  Pete’s phone sat on the coffee table. It vibrated twice, then twice again, then twice again. He gave Cam a baleful glance and sat forward to answer it.

  “Pappas.” He listened for a moment. “I’ll be there in twenty. Thank you, Officer.” He disconnected. “The life of a statie is never really his own. I hope you can get used to this.” He held out his arms to Cam.

  She sank into them. She burrowed her face into his neck and inhaled his scent—a combination of olive oil, aftershave, and man—and murmured, “I have so far.”

  He kissed her and then untangled the two of them. He tossed down the rest of both coffees.

  “I’ll clean up in the kitchen,” Cam said. “You go on.”

  “You’re a treasure.” He squeezed her hand and stood.

  “Call me when you can.” She also stood. “And stay safe.”

  “You give me great motivation to do exactly that.”

  “I know Frank,” Cam said to Ruth Dodge over the telephone line. She’d called her the moment she arrived home from Pete’s at a little after eight. “I’m not mistaken.” She leaned over from where she sat on her couch to stroke Preston as she spoke.

  “I haven’t seen him or heard from him since last summer. Did you get any idea of where he’s been living, or what he’s living on, for that matter?”

  “No. I didn’t talk to him directly. He sort of demanded to see Bev Montgomery.”

  Ruth didn’t respond for a moment. “That’s interesting,” she said at last.

  “I didn’t realize he did art photography. He has a real talent for it.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a black-and-white photograph of Moran Manor hanging in the lobby there,” Cam said. “It
’s a fall shot, sort of sepia toned. It’s really nice, a very artistic shot.”

  “Huh. He did photography when we first met. He’s very creative. He used the darkroom at the community college. He shot a dozen stunning portraits of the girls when they were toddlers. But so far as I know, he hasn’t touched it in several years.”

  “The director over at Moran asked him to do more. The rest of the seasons.”

  “I’m gobsmacked, as my Australian friend says. I wonder where he is. . . .” Ruth’s voice trailed off.

  “Albert said that they took someone away from Moran Manor in an ambulance tonight and that you were there. What’s going on?”

  Cam heard voices in the background.

  “Hey, I have to go,” Ruth said. “I’m actually at work. Just took a break to answer your call.”

  “I’ll let you know if I see Frank again.”

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate that. Let’s fit in a glass of wine one of these days. It’s been a while.”

  Cam agreed and disconnected. Ruth and Frank had seemed pretty happy when they married—Cam had attended the wedding—and now Ruth didn’t even know his address or that he sold high-quality photographs. What a shame. Not every marriage was destined for sixty years together, like Albert and Marie’s, she supposed. Cam realized Ruth hadn’t told her what had happened at the residence, either.

  Cam answered her ringing cell phone out of a deep sleep the next morning.

  “Beverly Montgomery is dead. At Moran Manor.” Pete’s voice on the phone sounded terse.

  “That’s terrible.” She glanced at the clock by her bed. Six thirty and still winter dark outside. “Did she have a heart attack or something?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.” He cleared his throat.

  Someone must be standing nearby. “What about the suspicious behavior?”

  “I need a favor from you.”

  So he didn’t want to talk about the death. “What’s the favor?”

  “I told you I was getting Dasha for the week. I can’t be there this morning when Alicia drops him off. Would you, please, go over to my apartment and meet her, and then bring him to the farm? I’ll get him sometime later today.”

  A dog on the farm? How would Preston react? Yikes. “Sure. What time? And will she know who I am?”

  “I’ll tell her. She wanted to hand him off at eight o’clock.”

  “I’ve got it. Don’t worry.” She swallowed. She definitely wasn’t a dog person.

  “Thank you. I owe you one.” He disconnected.

  Now she was wide awake. She’d asked him to call, and he had. Bev Montgomery had died. The woman had been unhappy and unpleasant, but she’d been relatively young, in her late sixties, Cam thought. A premature death.

  She stretched in her bed in the same room she had stayed in as a child and teenager for all those summers. She’d painted it when she moved in over a year ago. White trim set off walls in a pale shade of rose that picked up one of the colors in the braided rag rug on the wide pine floors. A refinished antique bureau sat against the wall, and Great-Aunt Marie’s little white wicker rocking chair occupied a corner. Cam’s ancient stuffed lion sat in it, reigning over the room. Her parents had brought the lion back from one of their anthropological sojourns to southern Africa. Cam expected they bought it at the airport before they left the country. Despite the fresh paint and the new bedding, she still inhaled the aroma of the old house: dry wood, a hint of lilac, and memories.

  Her copy of Albert and Marie’s black-and-white wedding picture sat on the bureau. Marie smiled directly into the camera, slim and lovely in a simple white wedding dress with sleeves and a neck of lace. Albert, in a dark suit and tie and not yet displaying the stocky build of a farmer, beamed at his bride. They’d had a long and happy marriage, and Marie had lived into her eighties before dying from pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis had come so late that no treatment would have been effective. The illness was short and not overly painful, but it gave Marie time to say good-bye to her loved ones.

  Albert had told Cam once that Bev had been incredibly kind and helpful to both of them while Marie lay dying. When Bev wasn’t tending to Marie, she cooked meals or helped Albert with the farm chores. He’d seen through Bev’s cantankerous attitude to a good heart within. Now Bev was dead, without her own chance to live into her eighties.

  Chapter 7

  An hour later, dressed and caffeinated, Cam drove toward Pete’s house. She’d finished her early morning chores. The chickens were fed and watered and free to go outside. She’d watered the seedlings in the hoop house, grateful that she’d had the water source put deep enough underground that it didn’t freeze, although they didn’t need much water in the winter, since growth was so slow. Today dawned another one of those clear, cold winter days, but at least with little wind to drive the cold deeper inside. The ten-degree air made her pull her wool scarf closer around her neck under the robin’s egg–blue sky.

  But now she was about to meet her new boyfriend’s difficult ex-wife and bring home a dog she had never met, an even chillier prospect than a morning of shoveling snow. What was she supposed to do with a dog? She’d never owned one, not as a child, not as an adult. Albert and Marie’s farm dog, Scout, had been a working dog, kept mostly to ward off foxes and woodchucks. In her view canines were needy animals, always making eye contact and wanting approval.

  She pulled on sunglasses when she passed an open field on the left. The sun bounced off the snow cover and into her eyes. She tried to adjust the glasses so she could see better. They’d gotten bent when she sat on them once. Scratches on the lenses also made looking through them resemble peering through a spider web. She supposed she could get new ones at the drugstore. If it ever were a priority for her.

  The heater in the old Ford started to warm her feet only minutes before she arrived at Pete’s. A shiny SUV sat idling in front of the house, a woman in large square-lensed sunglasses at the wheel. Cam pulled into the driveway and slid out of the cab.

  The woman—it had to be Alicia—now stood at the back of the car. Slender and petite in a puffy, pale pink jacket over ironed jeans tucked into snow boots with furry tops, she shoved her shades onto her head and pulled open the rear door. A plastic mat protected the floor of the compartment, and a grate walled the compartment off from the passenger section. A dog crouched with his paws in front of him.

  “Come on, Dasha,” the woman said in an impatient tone. “I’m already late.”

  Cam walked toward her. “I’m Cam Flaherty. Pete asked me to pick up his dog.”

  “His dog. Right. I know. He told me.” Alicia looked Cam up and down.

  Cam glanced down at her own outfit. Dirt stains on the knees of her jeans. Her winter boots that doubled as work boots, now with flecks of chicken manure and sawdust stuck to them. Her navy blue parka with the rip on the front pocket where it had caught on a nail in the attic once. She was suddenly back in high school, ever the over-tall, gawky geek, being checked out by an immaculately put-together cheerleader.

  Alicia turned to the car. She reached in and pulled Dasha by his collar until he jumped out onto the shoveled sidewalk.

  “Here he is,” she said out of pursed lips. “Pete couldn’t pick Dasha up himself. Nothing ever changes. His precious work is more important than anything else.” She raised the side of her top lip and glanced at Cam, as if she wanted company in bad-mouthing Pete.

  Instead, Cam knelt on one knee and extended the back of her hand to Dasha. Ruth had once shown her the correct way to approach a new dog. “Hey, buddy.”

  Dasha sniffed her and then butted her hand. His eyes were a pale arctic blue. The white mask around his face contrasted with the dark gray markings elsewhere. His pointed ears stood up straight. He would fit right in pulling a sled over the tundra.

  “I have a plane to catch. Key West,” Alicia said. “I can’t wait to get out of this cold.” She headed around the front of the car.

  Cam stood with her hand on the soft fur on
Dasha’s head. She was opening her mouth to thank Alicia when she heard the door slam.

  “Not a good-bye for you or a thank-you for me. No wonder it didn’t work out between her and Pete.” Cam patted Dasha on the head and watched the SUV drive away. “Well, we’re off to the farm, big guy. You and Preston are both northern animals. You should recognize each other.” So far, so good. He hadn’t pushed his snout into her private parts or started barking without ceasing.

  Dasha began to bark and didn’t stop. So much for that.

  “Hey, be quiet, doggy. I’m your babysitter for today. Get used to it.” Cam was surprised when he instantly quieted.

  She led him to the truck and opened the passenger door. He placed his front paws on the seat and jumped in like he’d always been there. She smiled. Unlike Pete’s wife, she certainly didn’t need a plastic sheet to protect the bench. The vehicle had seen plenty of dirt, and even dog hair, in its long life as a farm truck. She shut the door carefully.

  She glanced up at Pete’s windows. He was out working. And had been all night long. Which could mean only that Bev had been murdered. Cam would call Albert when she got home. He might have gleaned some information about the death through the grapevine. Or maybe Ellie knew something.

  A shiver ran through Cam, and not only from the air temperature. If Bev had been killed, that meant her murderer was walking around, free to kill again.

  Preston strolled up to the truck after Cam pulled into the barn twenty minutes later. She’d made room in the barn for the Ford before winter descended in earnest. Cleaning snow off a truck after shoveling wasn’t her idea of a good time.

  “We have company, Preston,” she said, climbing out of the cab. She went around to the other side and opened the door for Dasha, Preston at her heels.

  Dasha bounded out. Preston took one look at him and split out the door in a blur of motion. Dasha went after him.

  “Dasha, come here.” Cam used what she imagined a good dog-owner voice would be: a low-pitched, firm tone. She patted the side of her leg.