Farmed and Dangerous

by Edith Maxwell

  Ten minutes later Cam sat down to eat, the local Daily News spread out on the table. She idly flipped through the paper, noting that the Westbury Winter Festival was this coming weekend. It featured sledding and skating on Mill Pond, hot chocolate in the shed, and a snow person contest, weather permitting. So far it certainly appeared that there would be plenty of snow and plenty of frozen pond. December’s relative warmth had given way to January’s old-fashioned New England winter weather. With global climate change, who knew what February would bring?

  Her cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number but connected, anyway.

  “Cam? This is Lou. From the debate.”

  Lou. “Hey, Lou.”

  They chatted for a couple of minutes.

  “Let’s set that dinner date,” Lou said. “I mean, if you still want to.”

  A stab of guilt hit Cam. She’d rather be arranging a dinner date with Pete. But she couldn’t, could she?

  “I’d love to.”

  “Friday at Phat Cats Bistro? I can make a reservation.”

  “I’ve heard about that place. Small, in Amesbury, right?” Ruth had mentioned dining there with her mother. Delicious and creative dishes, an intimate setting, friendly owners.

  “Right. You’ll love it. In fact, you should sell vegetables to them. They like to use local produce.”

  “I’ll check into it.” So far she’d batted zero, or whatever the sports metaphor was, in her attempt to secure a new contract for supplying locally grown veggies. But she might as well keep trying.

  “Pick you up at six thirty?”

  She agreed and said good-bye. She’d get a good meal out of the evening and some intelligent conversation. She wasn’t marrying the guy or anything. And it could be that a little competition might make Pete realize what he was missing. Or maybe that was rationalizing her guilt.

  She returned to the paper and paused on a short article below the announcement about the Winter Festival. Richard Broadhurst had applied for a small business loan to expand his orchard at Cider Valley Farm. Interesting. Did he believe he was still going to be able to buy Bev’s land? With Bev’s death, the property would surely go to Ginger and her brothers. Cam fully expected to see several roads lined with overly large homes on the property by next summer. Overly large and shoddily built, if what DJ’s brother had said was true.

  After she finished eating, she refilled her wine and carried it to her desk, running her finger along the smooth stem. She checked the farm’s Web site, then paid a few bills and recorded the number of eggs she’d gathered. All that was under control. She rose and paced the length of her house and back. A killer roamed free. Albert might still be in danger. She hated the feeling that she couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t even talk over the case with Pete, as she had after the murder in the fall. Then he’d asked for her help in keeping her eyes and ears open in the community.

  She needed to lose herself in something. She moved to the couch, clicked on the television, and started to watch an episode of the latest BBC mystery drama. It reminded her too much of the current mystery, and she switched to a cooking show. That shouldn’t present any reminders of real life. But it featured a chef assembling une salade composée. The plated salads reminded her of Rosemary. Cam’s mind jumped right back into Bev’s murder. She switched off the TV.

  Her sleuthing at Moran Manor had gotten her exactly nowhere. She searched her brain to figure out what else she could do. She found her phone and called Alexandra.

  “Hey, I heard about Albert,” Alexandra said after greeting Cam. “Is he all right?”

  “He will be. He’s back at the residence. He’s still a little confused, but he should recover. What we don’t know is what actually happened to him. With the murder and all, I’m worried that he was attacked.”

  “What does your detective say?”

  My detective. Not exactly. Cam sighed but kept the thought to herself. “Detective Pappas said he doesn’t have the resources to pursue that line of inquiry, especially since the doctor couldn’t say if Albert hit his head in a fall or if somebody bopped him one.”

  “I’m glad he’s okay. But they should follow up on Albert. Maybe your friend Ruth can look into it.”

  “Good idea,” Cam said. “Have you talked to Hannah, the one who is Richard Broadhurst’s stepdaughter?”

  “I meant to call you. I talked to her this morning. She said her mom and him separated a few months ago. She said he’s not good with money. He likes to go down to Foxwoods, you know, the casino in Connecticut. She said he always returns with less money than what he took with him. Sometimes way less.”

  “Boy, I totally don’t get gambling,” Cam said. She sipped her wine. “Betting money on a game of chance seems crazy. And hanging around a big, noisy place with no natural lighting, to do it among a bunch of strangers who are drinking? Even worse.”

  “No possible way I’d do that. Plus, I don’t have any extra money to throw away. But back to Hannah. She didn’t seem upset about Richard not living with them anymore. I don’t think she ever liked him much.”

  “So he and her mom are getting a divorce?”

  “I’m not sure,” Alexandra said. “Hey, tell me how the hens are doing with this cold snap.”

  “Oh, I have bad news.”

  “More bad news?” She sounded horrified.

  “This is small-scale bad.” Cam laughed and then related the story of TopKnot’s demise.

  “The poor bird. But don’t worry about it. You can make stew out of her. Invite Lucinda over.”

  “That would be local food, all right.” Cam laughed again.

  “The rest are fine?”

  “In fact, four new ones arrived last night.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No.” Cam told her about the “donation” she’d received, and that DJ had said she could go ahead and integrate them.

  “Some people are just incredible,” Alexandra said. “I can’t believe they would abandon their pets. Like, what if you hadn’t found them? They could have frozen to death. Or killed each other in those close quarters. Who did you say signed the note?”

  “They signed it M and M. No idea who that is.”

  “Hey, I gotta split, Cam. Me and DJ are going to a movie. Tell Albert hi for me when you see him.”

  Cam disconnected. Richard wasn’t good with money. And from what DJ had said, Ginger might not be, either. She moved back to the computer and opened her “Moran Affair” file. She added the information about Richard’s gambling and Rosemary being a suspect. She typed a line about Ginger’s shoddy building practices.

  Preston ambled over and leaped onto her lap. Alexandra had mentioned chickens killing each other in close quarters. Moran Manor fit the description of close quarters, too. Cam gazed with satisfaction around her solitary abode, shared with exactly no one except a cozy cat.

  Shivering in the barn office the next morning, Cam checked the thermostat one more time. She’d switched on the space heater when she came in, but the temperature had risen only to sixty, even though it felt marginally warmer outdoors this morning than it had been. The clock on the thermostat read 7:15. She pulled her scarf more snugly around her neck and yawned. Her sleep had been troubled by what seemed like hundreds of thoughts and images. She’d awoken at least five times during the night and then had lain awake, restless, before sliding back into sleep. Her last dream before waking an hour earlier had first involved a banana farm on an island mountaintop and had devolved into Cam at the wheel of a vehicle packed with people, where she couldn’t quite reach the brake pedal. The car had rolled backward into an ocean, and she couldn’t stop it. She’d opened her eyes, grateful to be alone in her bed in Massachusetts in the middle of winter, despite feeling like her life reeled out of control.

  She shook off thoughts of her restless night and checked the seedling flats. The newly planted seeds were already sprouting in their warm beds. Maybe setting up the seed-starting station in the barn h
ad been a bad idea, though. The tiny plants would want warmer air than fifty-five, but keeping the electric space heater running around the clock wasn’t safe. She always found something new to learn about farming, which was a science experiment in action, with Cam as the lab technician. Or the mad scientist. A shame some of the experimental results ended up being failures.

  She watered the flats gently and then sat at the desk. She’d scheduled this Saturday as winter share pickup day. She examined the list of what would go into the shares on Saturday. It still seemed a little scant, even with the addition of a ball of fresh mozzarella to each shareholder’s portion. The share would be similar to what she’d brought to Moran Manor for the dinner. The cost of which she doubted Cooper would reimburse her, and she had no payback to expect in the future, either. She could offer winter squashes, greens, leeks, the ubiquitous kale, rutabagas, parsnips, and carrots. Onions and garlic. She’d run out of the Corey farm apples she’d bought in the fall, and Meg had said she couldn’t supply any more bushels this winter.

  What else could she add? She’d met a maple farmer last summer whose syrup production wasn’t far north into New Hampshire. What had the woman’s name been? It’d sounded like a man’s name. Ronny? Benny? No, she was named Dani. Dani Greene. She’d been about a foot shorter than Cam, but they had shared a bottle of wine at a farmers’ market potluck and had swapped farming stories. Cam might be able to wangle a wholesale price from her on a bottle of syrup for each share. She found Dani’s e-mail on her cell and sent her a message.

  Cam’s gaze fell on the phone list tacked above the desk. It’d been Albert’s list of contacts: seed companies, a soil amendment supplier, fellow farmers, even a small-engine mechanic for when the tiller broke down. Richard Broadhurst’s name topped the column labeled FARMERS. He lived right here in Westbury. He might give her a bulk price on stored apples, and she could include a pound or two for each subscriber. If she kept buying products from other farms, her bottom line was going to suffer. But if she didn’t satisfy her customers, who’d paid a premium price for their winter shares, she’d lose them. She had considered this financial balancing act when she acquired the farm, and had known it was risky. She had decided to take the plunge, anyway. Albert had alluded to the hard work she could expect when he gave her the farm, but he hadn’t touched much on the costs. Of course, he had farmed conventionally and had never considered trying to keep crops going all winter long.

  She squared her mental shoulders. She was smart. She would find a way to make it all work. She tapped Richard’s number into her cell and saved it. She was about to call him when she pulled her finger away from the phone. Even early rising farmers didn’t call each other before eight in the morning.

  She switched off the space heater and headed out to get some work done. Peering into the coop, she saw that the new hens appeared to have retained their feathers and were settling in like part of the flock. Good. She opened the coop’s small door. The weather was not quite as frigid as this morning, and the sky was the color of a slate roof. She sniffed. Snow was on its way.

  The largest of the new chickens pushed out onto the ramp leading down into the yard. The hen lifted her head and straightened her body. She let out a full-throated “Er-er er-errrr.”

  Cam stared. That she was a he. Those people had left her a rooster. It, he, must be the one they’d named Ruffles. Ruffles was the only non-female name on the list in the note they’d left—well, the only name human females didn’t normally go by—but what a silly thing to call a rooster. She peered at him. His comb stood a little taller than those of the hens, and his wattle was larger as well. She hadn’t planned on acquiring a rooster and didn’t want one. DJ had said males were pushy and noisy, although he’d also mentioned that they could help keep the hens in order and protect them against predators.

  She supposed she could sell the eggs for a higher price now that they would be both organic and fertilized. Or she could slaughter the fellow. Except she had no idea how to go about that. Did one simply sharpen the old ax and chop his head off like in the cartoons about Thanksgiving turkeys? She sighed. For today, at least, good old Ruffles there would enjoy the run of the yard.

  Chapter 20

  The wind turbine on the hill above Richard’s farmhouse spun lazily against the metallic sky, a stark contrast with the stylized sunny valley full of trees and the close-up of a smiling, winking apple on the sign reading CIDER VALLEY FARM.

  Cam had left Richard a message at eight. Even though he hadn’t responded, she had driven over to the orchard at nine, anyway, and had pulled into the open parking area in front of the house. The space had been poorly plowed, with icy ruts and hillocks of snow mixed in with bare spots of gravel. He could be outside or in his barn, working, doing whatever orchardists did in the dead of winter. This was her first visit to the farm. The house perched on the side of the hill. The Greek Revival style of the white farmhouse hinted at origins in the mid-1800s, but an addition that stuck out from the right side had clearly been built recently. White housewrap covered the new section, and each window still bore its manufacturer’s sticker. Richard should have put on the siding before winter hit. It must be cold in there. But if he had a gambling habit, he might have run out of funds to finish off the project.

  A barn with a corrugated metal roof sat to the side of the house. A rusty tractor stuck out of the snow next to an old refrigerator with rounded corners and no door. Down the hill in front of the house and barn stretched acres of bare-branched apple trees in the eponymous valley.

  She climbed out of the cab of the Ford and called his name. They’d never talked about their personal lives, except for him telling the story about his former career as an international opera singer. She wondered if Hannah and her mother had lived here at the farm, or if Richard had maintained the farmhouse while living at Hannah’s mother’s place.

  When she knocked on the door, no one emerged from the house. Cam couldn’t see a doorbell. She wandered toward the barn, whose wide sliding door stood closed. She hauled it open, fighting with the rust and the grit in the tracks, which prevented it from sliding smoothly. The overcast sky didn’t lend much light to the inside, but she glimpsed rows of wooden apple crates four feet square stacked on top of each other, a small battered forklift, and a heavy door with a cooler-type handle off to one side, likely a walk-in cooler for the apples. The space appeared tidy and tickled her nose with the smell of apples and sawdust, but she didn’t see a soul until a yellow cat streaked past and out the door.

  “Richard? It’s Cam Flaherty,” she called. “You in there?”

  When only silence answered, she pulled the door mostly shut, leaving it open a few inches so the cat could make its way in again. She gazed down the hill toward the orchard itself. A figure in red moved between the rows. Richard must be out there pruning or something. She pulled her hat a little lower on her head and stuck her hands in her pockets. She walked across the parking area toward the trees. A car started somewhere on the other side of the house. An engine revved. A black sedan streaked with road salt emerged. It picked up speed, spinning gravel. The car headed straight for Cam.

  “Hey!” Cam yelled. She took a quick step back. Her front foot slid on a patch of ice. She fell backward on one of the mounds of snow, landing on her rear. Her heart raced.

  The car kept coming. She tried to push herself up but slipped again. She waved her arms in front of her. Surely the driver would see her. Surely he would stop. The vehicle blasted straight at her. She tried to scramble out of the way, but she had run out of time.

  Heat off the engine warmed her face before the car swerved away from her at the last second. It tore down the drive toward the road. Cam stared at the license plate and said the combination of numbers and letters aloud a couple of times. The car also bore a bumper sticker with the word Jewelers on it, but Cam didn’t get a chance to catch more than that. She’d seen that car before somewhere. She pulled one glove off with her teeth, extracted her phone from he
r pocket, and tapped the license plate number into a notes app before she forgot it.

  She hoisted herself off the ground and leaned down to retrieve her keys from where she’d dropped them next to the mound she’d tripped on. She took a deep breath and started toward the orchard all over again. When she got within shouting distance, she started to hear singing. That had to be Richard working.

  “Yo, Richard,” she called. “It’s me, Cam Flaherty.” She waved.

  From halfway up a ladder leaning against a tree, he glanced up the hill and motioned her toward him. When she approached a minute later, he climbed down, holding what looked like a small chain saw on the end of a pole. He greeted her, then set the tool on the ground and tugged his gloves off. He pulled a cigarette pack out of his pocket. He extended it toward Cam.

  “Smoke?”

  “No thanks.”

  He lit a cigarette. “What’s new?” he asked after inhaling and breathing out the smoke with his chin tilted toward the sky. A navy blue watch cap sat on top of his large head, and wiry salt-and-pepper hair waved out from beneath the sides of the hat. Above a straggly gray beard his cheeks were pink from the cold. His work-stained red jacket resembled Cam’s own work coat: mended, frayed around the edges.

  “I’m all right, thank goodness,” Cam answered. “Somebody almost ran me down when I started walking into the orchard. Up there in front of the barn.” She pointed. “I thought I was dead meat.”

  He grimaced. “That must have been—” He caught himself and closed his mouth, exhaling. He continued, “It was, uh, my friend. Sorry about that.” He frowned.

  “He seemed to be in a crazy big hurry.”

  Richard nodded. He said nothing else.