by Gin Jones
“I don’t know,” Mabel said. She’d wondered much the same thing herself, but she also knew just how varied people’s interests could be. Over the years, she’d developed apps for some of the strangest subjects, and the more obscure they were, the more passionate the clients had been about them. She’d quickly learned that the apps she’d thought didn’t stand a chance of finding a market because they were for such niche subjects, were often among the most commercially successful. “I can think of worse things for someone to be interested in than growing rhubarb.”
Lena snorted delicately. “You must be as crazy as he is. Don’t let me stop you from wasting your time. I’ll cut you some slack this one time while I finish getting my video evidence on the dangerous condition of Graham’s property. It’ll probably be another ten minutes before I’m done and can get home to call the tow company, so you’d best finish your business by then. I may not be able to apply the HOA rules to Graham, but I can get your car towed.”
* * * *
Mabel hurried up the driveway, squeezing between the vehicles and past a pile of discarded broken pots, rotted pieces of potting benches and several lengths of broken metal sidewall supports to the entrance of the thirty-foot-long commercial greenhouse. The door was propped open with a bucket of what looked like potting soil, so she stepped inside and called out, “Hello, Mr. Winthrop. It’s Mabel Skinner. Could we talk?”
There was no response.
“Hello?”
Again, nothing but silence. Graham had to be nearby, though, given the way the door was propped open. People in a small town might leave their back doors unlocked, like her Aunt Peggy had done, but they didn’t leave them wide open in locations visible from the street. The greenhouse was attached to the side of the farmhouse, and apparently served as an oversized mudroom, leading to the kitchen, which Mabel could see through another propped-open door into the house itself. The air was heavy and humid, presumably both virtues for growing, if not for human comfort. The exterior shingles of the wall to the left of the entry into the house itself were entirely covered with pegboard, and hanging from them were hoes, rakes, trowels, dibbles, and several sizes of clippers, along with a set of keys and a car remote. Next to it on the ground was a pair of pet dishes and another plastic bucket like the one at the entrance, except that this one had a lid, and kibble was neatly handwritten on the side in precise block letters.
If Graham wasn’t answering her, it was most likely because he didn’t want to talk to her. Mabel had ignored unwanted visitors herself in the past, and after a few minutes, they’d gone away. At least when she’d lived in Maine. It hadn’t worked as well here in West Slocum, because all of Aunt Peggy’s friends knew the trick to opening the kitchen door, even when it was locked. Mabel had grown accustomed to Emily and Rory wandering in with only a perfunctory greeting, but she wouldn’t have been as understanding if a stranger showed up and couldn’t take a hint when she refused to answer the door. The last thing she wanted to do was annoy Graham even more than he’d been the night before.
As she was turning to leave, she heard a small, rough engine starting, followed immediately by a high-pitched squeal that sounded human, not mechanical. What if instead of ignoring her, Graham was injured, and that was the only noise he could make to call for help?
The noises seemed to have come from the far right corner of the greenhouse, near the door into the kitchen. Mabel took a few tentative steps deeper into the greenhouse.
“Mr. Winthrop? Are you all right?”
There was no response, just a soft scrabbling sound from where she’d heard the prior noises, like fingers digging in the dirt. Graham wouldn’t do that if he was trying to pretend he wasn’t there so she’d go away.
She continued down the center aisle of the greenhouse to see what was making the noise. The ground was covered with wood chips that had been smoothed and tamped down so thoroughly, they almost looked like a sheet of fiberboard. To each side of the aisle were low tables holding flat after flat filled with two-inch-diameter pots. Each pot held a single seedling, presumably rhubarb, judging by the tiny red stems, and a wooden marker with a five-digit number in handwriting that was almost as precise as if it had been done by a laser printer.
Once she was halfway down the center aisle, she could see that the greenhouse, like the farmhouse, had been added onto over the years. In the far corner, where the sounds had come from, the main growing space opened into a smaller, hobby-sized greenhouse that jutted out toward the back yard.
Mabel continued down the path, keeping a wary eye out for hoses or abandoned tools that might trip her, but unlike the unkempt state of Graham’s front yard, everything inside the greenhouse was orderly and well maintained, more like a scientist’s lab than anything to do with messy Mother Nature. The glass walls and roof looked freshly washed and dried, with no water spots or specks of dirt. Hoses were all coiled and hung on the lower half of the pegboard, beneath the smaller tools. She noticed then that the pegboard had been painted with outlines to indicate what went where. A trowel was missing, but everything else appeared to be in its assigned place.
The engine sound clicked off just as she reached the end of the seedling tables where the wood-chip-lined path turned right toward the secondary greenhouse. Mabel paused, waiting for any indication that she wasn’t alone. She thought she heard a light rustling in the greenhouse, but it might have been her imagination. Or perhaps just some leaves brushing against each other in the breeze that ran through the greenhouses.
Steeling herself, Mabel turned the corner to look inside the smaller greenhouse. As she did, a fat little tortoiseshell cat came racing at her, startling her into taking a step back and setting her pulse to racing. The cat skidded to avoid a collision with Mabel’s legs, and then shot past her on the way to the exit.
Mabel shook her head in bemusement. It had been weeks since a barn cat—or in this case, a greenhouse cat—had startled her. She’d grown used to them appearing without warning in the most unexpected spots, peeking out from crevices in the barn, peering down from the rafters, or leaping out of piles of hay.
As her adrenaline settled down, Mabel realized that the cat’s presence would explain both the squeal she’d heard before and the brushing sound. The engine was probably something automated for the greenhouse. She’d been letting her anxieties get the best of her, and Graham was either hiding inside the farmhouse, waiting for her to leave, or possibly out in the back yard, working in his rhubarb bed and oblivious to her presence. There was no reason to be nervous. Or to stay. She should just go home and try again the next day at his office.
Mabel’s attention was caught by the antique library card catalogue directly to her left on the inside of the short wall next to the smaller greenhouse’s doorway. Each drawer was labeled with the same precision she’d seen on the pot labels. It reminded her of the tidy labels Aunt Peggy had used for her seed stock. Had the two farmers known each other? They’d both participated in the same CSA and farmers’ market, so they might have run into each other. Mabel couldn’t recall any mention of the rhubarb breeder in her aunt’s journal pages but she hadn’t read the entire thing yet. She’d been too busy just keeping the farm in top condition for attracting a buyer.
Mabel would have loved to peek inside the catalogue drawers, but if Graham caught her being nosy, she’d never be able to convince him to forget about what had happened the night before. Reluctantly, she turned away and gave the smaller greenhouse a quick once-over, just in case it hadn’t been the cat making the little noises earlier. Nothing seemed to be out of place, and she started to turn back to the main greenhouse and leave.
Something niggled at her brain though, and she gave the space another look, starting with the card catalogue to her left and moving along the tables with larger pots than in the main greenhouse, filled with full-grown rhubarb plants instead of seedlings, and across the other short end.
There. She
looked again. On the floor at the far end of the greenhouse, the neatly compacted wood chips gave way to a disheveled pile of shredded leaves that had been pulled from a half-dozen or so nearby plants, leaving only bare stalks.
That was odd. The naked stalks looked unhealthy without their green tops, and it didn’t seem like something that would be done to anything except weeds. Even if harvesting the leaves didn’t harm the rest of the plants, dropping them on the ground didn’t seem like something Graham would do. Someone else might compost them, but Graham reportedly believed they were edible, so if he’d harvested them, he would have put them in some sort of container, not where they might be exposed to unhealthy pathogens that would outweigh the anticipated benefits from eating the leaves. No matter how neatly the place was maintained, the paths were still made of dirt and wood chips, and definitely weren’t clean enough to eat off of. So why would he go to the trouble of collecting relatively clean leaves and then put them somewhere that would make them dirty and difficult to transport?
It had taken all Mabel’s willpower to resist peeking in the card catalogue, so she had none left to keep her away from this new puzzle. She took a cautious step closer to the pile of shredded leaves. Maybe it was a farming thing that only another grower would understand. Perhaps if she could get a close-up look at it, she could describe it to Rory and Emily and they would know why the leaves had been shredded and then tossed on the ground. A picture would be even better.
Mabel took out her phone and glanced behind her, half expecting Graham to appear suddenly, waving his knife and claiming she was trying to steal his pile of rhubarb leaves. One good thing about going farther into the small greenhouse was that if he did show up to threaten her, she wouldn’t be trapped, but would be close to the other exit just beyond the shredded leaves.
Reminded that time was of the essence, not just because Graham might catch her snooping but because the ten minutes to move her car was rapidly running out, she hurried over to get her picture. After snapping one from about six feet away, she moved closer to get a better shot. As she moved her phone to center the image, she caught a glimpse of a rubber boot almost the same color as the leaves. It was lying on the back of its shaft, the toe sticking up out of the leaves, right next to the glass door.
Mabel froze, convinced now that something was seriously wrong. She could believe that the shredded leaves were some farming thing she didn’t understand, but there was no reason for a boot to be abandoned on the greenhouse floor, half buried in shredded leaves, right where someone would trip over it on the way in or out of the back door. Especially not when the rest of the growing space had been so obsessively tidy.
Mabel moved closer. As she did, it became apparent there was more than just a boot and a few shredded leaves on the ground. To the right of the back door, in the space between the glass wall and the potting tables, was the body of Graham Winthrop. He lay on his back, his eyes opened sightlessly, with more shredded rhubarb leaves jutting out from between his still, dead lips.
Chapter 5
An hour after Lena had threatened to have Mabel’s Mini Cooper towed, the car was still parked in the street. Of course, it was now penned in by an ambulance, a fire truck, three police cruisers, and a detective’s unmarked SUV. Even Lena wouldn’t dare try to have all of those vehicles towed.
Mabel had long since given her statement to a detective, who’d introduced himself as Frank O’Connor. He was a short, thin man about her own age, with dark hair. While he was getting her contact information and a basic description of how she’d found the body, he’d accompanied each question with a nervous laugh that made her wonder how effective he would be while interviewing actual suspects.
Apparently his department knew his limitations and wouldn’t let him investigate a homicide alone, because he’d told her she couldn’t leave until he’d heard back from a state police detective who would be consulting on the case and might want to talk to Mabel. O’Connor said she could wait in her car, but as she was turning away she thought of the cat that had run out of the greenhouse right before she found the body. It would need to be cared for, now that Graham couldn’t do it any longer. Lena didn’t seem like the sort who’d make sure the animal was fed and watered, and she’d probably consider anyone doing it to be in breach of the HOA rules. Mabel turned back to O’Connor and told him about the cat. He promised to pass the information along to the animal control officer.
Mabel went over to her car to wait for the state police detective. The weather was clear and warm enough, at least while wearing her aunt’s barn coat, that she chose not to climb inside. Instead, she leaned against the driver’s side door and checked her phone to see if Danny had sent her a proposed contract for the sale of the farm yet. He had, so she forwarded it to Jeff Wright in Maine, and began making a list on her phone of things she needed to do to prepare for the sale. Mostly, it involved packing and figuring out what she wanted to take with her back to Maine. Pixie, of course, and all of her food and toys. Plus the farm journals and the pineapple clock that was Mabel’s favorite of all her aunt’s kitschy items.
She couldn’t think of anything else she wanted to keep. She didn’t have room for any of her aunt’s knickknacks or other personal belongings in her cottage in Maine, even if they were to her taste. Perhaps the buyer would be able to use the larger items like the appliances and basic furniture.
Mabel looked up from her phone and noticed Lena zeroing in on the young detective. She must have come outside earlier in response to all the sirens and been held back until just then by the uniformed officers controlling the scene.
Mabel couldn’t hear the words clearly due to the rumbling noise of a fire engine idling on the street, but judging by Lena’s emphatic hand gestures in the direction of the various parked vehicles and the nervous laughter of the junior detective, she had jumped straight into lecturing him about the HOA parking restrictions. Maybe Lena was really that determined to enforce the association’s rules and was threatening to tow the police and emergency vehicles after all. If Lena had considered the tiny Mini Cooper to be a dangerous obstruction of local traffic, then she had to be in a total panic over the way the subdivision’s entrance was completely blocked by the emergency and police vehicles.
After about five minutes, Detective O’Connor was saved by the arrival of the mayor, who’d had to wait while the fire truck, which was no longer needed, left to make room for his SUV to enter the subdivision. He’d eventually parked in front of Lena’s house, perhaps because it was out of her current line of sight. If she had seen it, she’d likely have embarked on another lecture about the rules, not just because of the traffic issues, but because of the advertising on the vehicle, which was probably prohibited by the HOA too.
When Danny came up from behind Lena to talk to the young detective, the woman didn’t give him a chance. She rounded on him, her words carrying clearly now that the idling fire truck had left. “I told you that someone needed to deal with the Graham Winthrop situation before something bad happened. Your father would have listened to me. No one was murdered in West Slocum while he was mayor. But now there have been two just this year. That’s what happens when you let the little things slide. They turn into bigger problems.”
“I’m sorry, Lena,” Danny said. “I had a talk with Graham every time you came to me about it, but there was nothing more I could do. In any event, we don’t know that he was murdered yet. It could have been natural causes. You know Graham wasn’t in the best of health recently. He’d been going downhill for months, in fact.”
“There’s no way Graham died of natural causes. He was too stubborn for that.” Lena turned toward Mabel and gestured imperiously for her to join them.
She decided she’d better go see what the woman wanted before Lena decided to ask one of the uniformed officers to give the Mini Cooper a parking ticket.
“Well?” Lena demanded. “Am I right? Was Graham murdered?”
“I’m not qualified to answer that.” Even if Mabel had been, she wouldn’t have wanted to get dragged into the middle of something that wasn’t any of her business, especially with the detective, whose business it was to figure out if it was murder, standing right there. Mabel just wanted to get back to the farm and start preparing for its sale. “I’m not a medical examiner or a detective.”
“No, but you saw the body,” Lena said impatiently. “Did it look natural?”
Mabel glanced at the detective, who nodded his permission to answer. “It depends on what you mean by ‘natural.’ There wasn’t any blood or obvious injury, but Graham had a bunch of rhubarb leaves sticking out of his mouth. I don’t know if that counts as a natural death, but it’s definitely not normal, even for someone who advocated eating them. It’s possible that he killed himself with the leaves, either intentionally or because he truly believed they were safe to eat.”
Lena focused on the mayor again. “See? I knew it wouldn’t be something as simple as a heart attack with Graham. He’s been determined to make my life miserable for the last eight years, and I bet he’s laughing right now about how much trouble he’s causing me even when he’s dead. Now there’s going to have to be an autopsy, and an investigation, and it’s going to take forever to resolve, and meanwhile, this property, which is already an eyesore, is going to get worse and worse with no one to care for it.”
“What about his family, or heirs?” Mabel said. “Won’t they step in to take care of the property?”
“Not likely,” Lena said shortly. “I’ll probably have to end up buying it myself so I can raze the buildings and get it properly landscaped. It may be the only way to finally rid the town of this blight on the neighborhood. No one else seems to care about it.”
“Graham doesn’t have any remaining family that I know of,” Danny explained. “He wasn’t from here originally, and I’ve never heard him talk about any family other than his wife. He only moved here when they married. His wife was born and raised in West Slocum—her family owned the farmhouse and all the land around it before it was sold to the subdivision’s developer. She inherited it before she married Graham. They never had kids, and I believe he was an only child.”