Rhubarb Pie Before You Die

by Gin Jones

  “How was it that you didn’t happen to see the killer the morning Graham died? You were incredibly fast at noticing the jogger and his unleashed dog just now, and it’s about the same time of day as the murder.”

  “I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

  That sounded like Lena really had seen something. She wasn’t generally shy about explaining herself when she felt she was in the right.

  “Did you tell the police what you saw then?”

  “I always cooperate with the police.”

  “Even when it would implicate yourself? One possible explanation for why you didn’t see anyone else here that morning is if it was you in the greenhouse with him. Confronting him like you’re doing with me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lena looked honestly confused. “I’m never confrontational. I’m just doing my job, protecting the neighborhood.”

  “I see.” Mabel crossed her arms over her chest. “So the morning he died, were you just doing your job? Goading him into assaulting you, so you could claim self-defense?”

  “I overslept that morning,” she snapped. “I’d been so worried about the state of Graham’s property that I developed insomnia. The kind where you can’t fall asleep for hours and hours. I didn’t want him dead, but I have to say, at least now I can sleep at night.”

  She sounded legitimately irritated, and Mabel was almost inclined to believe her, especially since she knew what it was like to stay up too late while obsessed with a problem, until Lena added, “And I’ll sue you for slander if you repeat the insinuation that I was ever anything less than professional with Graham. Now give me the key and go.”

  Mabel was too tired to play any more games, so she leaned back against the greenhouse door. “I’m not giving you the key.”

  Lena set down her video camera and grabbed Mabel’s hand containing the key.

  Seriously? Now they were going to play keep-away? Mabel couldn’t give up the key. She’d promised to care for Graham’s seedlings, and the police wouldn’t give her a replacement key if Lena complained to them.

  Mabel tucked her hand behind her, between her back and the greenhouse door. Even as tired as she was, she should be able to win this game. She’d gotten stronger from her work on the farm, and she had the advantage of being some twenty years younger than Lena.

  On the other hand, Lena was highly motivated. She wasn’t going to give up easily. They might be stuck here for hours. Or until Charlie got her message and she didn’t answer his return call, so he came looking for her.

  Mabel wanted to slide down the door to sit on the ground, but that would leave her too vulnerable if Lena had completely lost her grip on reality, as she seemed to have. Mabel needed to be able to run if necessary.

  It felt like an hour had passed in their standoff, but it was probably only a couple of minutes before a car pulled into Graham’s newly emptied driveway. Mabel recognized it as belonging to the mayor. Lena wouldn’t do anything violent in front of a witness, least of all a witness who, for all intents and purposes, was in charge of the police department. Mabel tucked the disputed key into one of her barn coat’s big pockets.

  Lena stepped back and turned to look at the mayor. “Well. It’s about time someone got here. It’s been at least fifteen minutes since I called the police dispatcher. Where’s the patrol car?”

  “They’re not coming,” Danny said. “The police chief asked me to come take care of it.”

  She snorted. “Like you could take care of anything.”

  Mabel slipped past Lena who didn’t try to stop her now that there was a witness. Mabel kept the mayor between her and Lena before saying, “I’m glad you’re here. And grateful you got here so quickly.”

  Danny shrugged. “No problem. I live just around the corner. In fact, I sometimes take my morning walk through the subdivision. It really is a lovely place.”

  “No thanks to you or the zoning department or the police,” Lena said. “The neighborhood would have become a blighted mess if it weren’t for me insisting that the laws be enforced.”

  “Of course,” Danny said. “We all appreciate your work. But I think you can take a break now. From what I understand, Mabel is working to keep the greenhouse from becoming more of a problem than it already is. You two should be working together.”

  Lena peered at Mabel suspiciously. “I don’t think she’s here for legitimate reasons. She’s never been here this early before.”

  Danny turned a questioning look on Mabel.

  “I might have a lead for the police to investigate relating to Graham’s death,” she said, keeping her answer vague, just in case she was wrong. “I need to check something in the greenhouse before I give them the information.”

  “Really?” Danny said. “That’s wonderful news. Can I help?”

  Mabel glanced at Lena. “You can keep her from interfering.”

  “Of course.” Danny wrapped his arm around Lena’s elbow as if he were escorting her at a formal function and gently led her down the driveway. “I appreciate your letting us know about the situation,” he told Lena, “but I can take it from here.”

  “But—”

  “No, really,” Danny said. “You’ve done enough today. You deserve a break.”

  “Well…” Lena let herself be led down the driveway.

  Danny released her arm when they reached the sidewalk and watched for a moment as if to make sure she kept heading for her house. Apparently satisfied, he hurried back to the greenhouse.

  “It’s safe now. You can do whatever you need to.” He frowned. “Why are you here so early anyway? You told me you weren’t a morning person, so all appointments to view the farmhouse needed to be in the afternoon.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” Mabel turned to unlock the greenhouse door. “I finally decoded Graham’s journal for the last few weeks before he died, and apparently Sam Trent confronted him in the greenhouse and even threatened him with a pair of clippers. They should still be where they were tossed, complete with fingerprints and maybe even some blood, since Trent cut himself on them. I just want to make sure they’re still there, and then I’ll let the police know.”

  “Where do you think they are?” Graham followed Mabel inside. “I can help search for them.”

  “I’m not sure exactly. They were arguing over near where the tools are hanging next to the back door of the house, and then Trent threw them, and they fell between the planting benches and the wall of the greenhouse.” Mabel nodded to the right side of the greenhouse. “If you look under the benches over there, I’ll take the other side.”

  Mabel dropped to her hands and knees, not caring whether her jeans got dirty, while the mayor stayed on his feet and bent to peer under the tables. About halfway up the aisle, Mabel caught a reflection of light on metal blades.

  “Found them!” Mabel shouted.

  The mayor, who’d been proceeding more slowly, trotted over to peer under the table. “Shall we move the table and get them?”

  “I think it’s better if we leave them for the police to retrieve,” Mabel said. “I don’t want them to think we planted the evidence. I’ll take some pictures, so they know where to look.”

  While she used her phone’s camera, the mayor straightened. “Everyone will be so relieved to have this case closed.”

  Mabel got to her feet. “There’s no guarantee that Trent did it, but this should at least get the detectives to take him seriously as a suspect.”

  “Don’t be so modest,” Danny said. “You solved the case. It has to have been Trent. The only reason anyone thought it might not be is that he kept saying he’d gotten over his anger and was moving on. This proves he was lying.”

  “It’s still circumstantial,” Mabel said on the way out of the greenhouse. “I don’t know if simply having a motive will be enough to convince a jury, even with evidence of an earlier v
iolent incident.”

  “Maybe not, but now that the police know where to focus their attention, I’m sure they’ll find additional evidence to convict him.” Danny waited while Mabel locked the greenhouse door behind her, and then gave the handle a tug to make sure it was secure. “I bet Lena knows more than she’s saying. I just don’t know why she keeps denying it. Unless someone’s paying her to keep quiet. I’ll go talk to the police chief now about having someone question her a little more closely.”

  “Thanks for your help,” Mabel said while the mayor got into his car. She waved and headed down the sidewalk to her Mini Cooper. She hoped the mayor was right, and the clippers led to more evidence and then an arrest.

  As she reached her car, it dawned on her that she hadn’t heard the mayor’s car start or pull out of the driveway. What was he waiting for? Could Lena have come back to complain some more?

  She listened but didn’t hear any voices, and if Lena were confronting the mayor, the conversation would be easily audible. The woman seldom bothered to keep her voice down, even when complaining about other people’s noisy behavior. If she was being quiet, something was wrong.

  Chapter 24

  Mabel turned off her phone’s ringer so it wouldn’t betray her presence, and then crept back to Graham’s driveway. The mayor’s car was still there, but he wasn’t inside it.

  Maybe he hadn’t had a chance to take his morning walk before getting the call about Lena’s complaint, so he was doing a make-up trek around the subdivision. It still seemed odd though, since he’d been planning to talk to the police chief right away about interrogating Lena more closely.

  She did a careful visual sweep of the subdivision and saw no one on the sidewalks. The road bent out of sight eventually, but not in the distance the mayor might have traveled in the last two or three minutes.

  What if he’d decided to get the clippers and bring them to the police, despite the risk of contaminating the scene? Mabel trotted up the driveway and found the greenhouse door propped open. That shouldn’t have been possible. She knew it had been closed securely before she left. She checked the doorknob, and there was no obvious damage from the door being forced, so someone other than herself apparently had a key. Or had found one, if Graham had kept a copy hidden outside in case he was locked out. Lena probably knew where it was from seeing it get hidden while she was snooping. Or the mayor might have guessed the hiding spot, since in his role as a broker, he’d probably experienced all the places where a homeowner might leave an emergency key. But Mabel couldn’t think of any good reason for either the mayor or Lena to be on Graham’s property. Maybe it was someone else. Sam Trent, perhaps, having finally remembered the clippers and how incriminating they would be if the police found them?

  Except no one was visible in the main greenhouse. Why would anyone break in unless it was to get those clippers? With Graham’s journals safely locked up at Quon Liang’s office, there was nothing else worth stealing, not even by another rhubarb breeder like Sandy Faitakis.

  Mabel grabbed one of the discarded metal sidewall supports from the pile of debris near the door, just in case it wasn’t the mayor and she needed to defend herself. As she stepped inside the greenhouse, she heard what sounded like a door closing in the distance. It seemed to come from where the second greenhouse led into the back yard. She considered calling the police to report a break-in, but then thought it might be the mayor out there. Perhaps he’d changed his mind about going to the police station and had instead called and arranged for the detective to meet him at the scene of the crime. She would look like an idiot if she called the police on the mayor, and she didn’t need that kind of attention from them right now. She was trying to stay under their radar until the killer was caught.

  She’d just check to see if she was right about the mayor being in the back yard, and then leave before the detective could arrive.

  As she headed down the central path of the greenhouse, she wondered why the mayor would wait in the back yard instead of in his own car. Maybe he was there more in his role as the only real estate broker in town, sizing up the property for describing it to potential buyers, assuming Lena didn’t buy it from the estate before it could be listed.

  Mabel hadn’t really thought about it before, but Danny would benefit doubly from Graham’s death. As the only real estate broker in town, he might get paid for selling the property. Even if he didn’t get the listing, he would profit politically as the mayor by taking credit for removing a blight on the community. A new owner, whether Lena or someone else, was bound to keep the place in better condition than Graham had. Danny would also have one less set of hassles as mayor, since Lena would have less to complain about to the police who in turn complained to him.

  But was any of that a reason to kill someone? Graham hadn’t seemed to think so. He’d mentioned worsening relationships with the Enforcer, the Salesman, and the Brother—Lena Shaw, Sam Trent, and Rob Robinson, respectively—but not with the Broker, Danny.

  Mabel could see why he’d take both the Salesman and the Brother seriously in their escalated pressure. They both had considerable financial leverage over him, either in terms of causing him to lose his license to practice law or having his property foreclosed on. But the Enforcer couldn’t do anything she hadn’t done before. Graham could continue to thumb his nose at her, as he’d apparently been doing for years. So why had it even registered on him enough to mention it in his journal?

  Unless Lena Shaw wasn’t the Enforcer.

  Mabel paused on the threshold between the main greenhouse and the smaller one where Graham had been killed.

  Who else could be the Enforcer? Someone who could make good on whatever leverage he was using to put pressure on Graham. Someone who could enforce zoning regulations and get the board of health to condemn the property?

  The mayor could do that. As the chief executive of the town, he was, by definition, an enforcer of laws. He could even have invoked eminent domain powers to take the property if necessary.

  What if Danny was the Enforcer and Lena was the Broker? Graham hadn’t even mentioned the Broker after that dream about a relationship between that person and the Enforcer. The Broker hadn’t bothered him enough to write about, but he’d clearly been worried about the Enforcer making good on threats.

  Had Mabel gotten it backward, and Danny was the Enforcer and Lena was the Broker? The selling of real estate wasn’t the first thing that came to Mabel’s mind when thinking about Lena, but she had been a broker when Graham first met her and she was selling the houses in the subdivision.

  If Danny was the Enforcer, then he was a solid suspect for the murder, much more likely than Lena was. Danny certainly had the physical ability to kill Graham, probably more so than any other suspect except Sam Trent. While not as muscular as Sam Trent was, Danny was a large man, and a sufficient match for Graham, who, despite his size, hadn’t been in the best of health.

  As to motive, Danny could benefit both financially and politically from Graham’s death. And finally, Danny had had the opportunity to commit the murder. Unlike Lena and Sam Trent, Danny was a morning person who took early walks in the subdivision, which potentially put him near the scene at the relevant time. The detectives might not have collected any eyewitness evidence that the mayor had been in the subdivision on Monday morning, but she suspected no one had thought to ask about him specifically. No one would think to volunteer that they’d seen him that morning if it was a frequent event. People tended not to notice things that happened repeatedly, so even if he’d been spotted, it wouldn’t have made much of an impression, and the witness might not have made the connection between the murder and seeing him in what appeared to be a routine activity.

  Danny was probably elated that Mabel had found some solid circumstantial evidence pointing to someone else. If Trent were convicted, then the mayor wouldn’t have to worry that his own guilt would ever be brought to light.
/>   It all made sense, but Mabel needed more evidence before she could take her theory to the detectives. Danny had thought Lena knew more than she was saying. What if she knew he’d been at the greenhouse around the time of the murder, possibly overhearing them arguing? She probably wouldn’t have been close enough to see the actual knifing, but she could at least place Danny at the scene. She might be willing to keep quiet as long as no one else was arrested and blamed for the murder, but would she really let an innocent man be convicted? It hardly seemed consistent with what Mabel thought was Lena’s true commitment to upholding even the tiniest rules as part of an overall belief in respect for the law.

  Lena might well be the only thing standing between the mayor getting off scot-free and being convicted of murder. Danny couldn’t afford to let Lena talk to the police, not now that there was a credible suspect who could take the fall for him. And now was the perfect time to silence her, before anyone could question her about Sam Trent’s supposed presence at the scene of the crime.

  Mabel started to dial 911, but then realized she didn’t know what to say to make them take her seriously. Jeff Wright had always taken care of that sort of thing, but now she was on her own.

  What would get the police to act? They wouldn’t care if she said that someone had broken into a greenhouse that had nothing of obvious value in it. What if she explained she thought the town’s mayor might have committed murder and was planning to do it again? No, that wouldn’t work, even if it was true. Not only would they be dismissive of her, but they’d think she was crazier than Graham had been. And if it turned out she was wrong after she made that kind of slanderous accusation against a popular mayor? In that case, even Rory and Emily would have to admit Mabel couldn’t live in West Slocum any longer and should go back to her home in Maine.