Berried Secrets

by Peg Cochran

  Monica wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was used to the anonymity of the big city.

  She ended up buying the Christie book—she wanted to see if she agreed with Greg about its being one of Dame Agatha’s best works. She’d also picked up the newest Peter Robinson—a current favorite author—but then put it back down. It would give her an excuse to come back again later in the month to purchase it.

  Monica rather reluctantly left Book ’Em and headed next door to Bart’s Butcher—the type of old-fashioned place where they had sawdust on the floor and tied your package in paper fastened with string.

  She planned to pick up a steak. She’d invited Jeff to have dinner with her—he was looking entirely too thin for Monica’s tastes. She suspected he subsisted on takeout and microwave dinners, neither of which was particularly high in nutritional value. That, combined with his worry about the farm, had turned him from lean and muscular to almost scrawny.

  Monica selected a prime looking T-bone, and Bart Dykema, a round barrel of a man, pulled a sheet of paper from the roll on the counter and placed the steak on it. He gestured toward Monica’s package with his chin.

  “See you bought something in that shop next door.”

  Monica nodded.

  “Nice guy, Greg Harper.” He measured out a piece of string from the roller attached to the counter and cut it. “Ran for mayor last year but was defeated by Sam Culbert, who’s holding the office now. Harper’s widowed, you know.” He wrapped the string around the neat bundle he’d created. “Not seeing anyone so far as I can tell.”

  Monica felt her face getting red. Was Bart insinuating that she and Greg . . .

  “How’s your brother doing?” Bart said, suddenly changing the subject. “Got a good crop of cranberries going? I imagine he’ll be harvesting any day now.”

  “He’s managing,” Monica said, although in reality, the farm was bleeding money, and Monica hoped she’d be able to help Jeff staunch the flow. Sam Culbert, who was the farm’s former owner in addition to being the mayor, had managed the farm for Jeff while he was overseas, and Jeff had returned to find the place in near financial ruin.

  Monica took her package, bid Bart a good day and headed toward the farmer’s market at the end of Beach Hollow Road. She picked up salad fixings—tender lettuce, a cucumber and tomatoes still warm from the sun. Her shopping completed, Monica headed back toward the farm.

  • • •

  On her return trip to Sassamanash Farm—so named because it was the word for cranberry in the Algonquin Indian language—Monica stopped at the crest of the hill again. This time she could see the farm in the distance. It looked like a carpet of green dotted with the brilliant fire engine red of the ripe cranberries. The berries had been pale pink when Monica had arrived at Sassamanash Farm, but as the weather had become cooler, they had turned their characteristic ruby color.

  If she squinted, she could see the dollhouse sized cottage she was in the process of renovating, the stretch of black macadam where tourists parked when they came to watch the harvest, and the dot of white that was the clapboard building that housed the small store where they sold baked goods made with cranberries, and kitchen items decorated with the fruit, such as tea towels, napkins and pot holders.

  Monica continued down the hill toward the farm. She parked in front of the little cottage she now called home. She had seen its inherent potential the minute she arrived from Chicago. It had dormer windows, a gabled roof and a trellis with the remains of summer’s climbing roses. It had taken a month of painting, scrubbing and sheer elbow grease to make it habitable, but Monica was pleased with how it had turned out.

  She stowed the steak she’d purchased at Bart’s in the refrigerator along with the salad fixings. The cottage still smelled of sugar and spice from the goodies she’d baked early that morning—cranberry muffins, cranberry scones dusted with sugar and a cranberry salsa she was still experimenting with to get the right balance of flavors—both sweet and hot—with accents of lime, cilantro and jalapeno. Monica packed everything in a basket and headed back out the door.

  Darlene Polk was behind the counter of the Sassamanash Farm store when Monica arrived. She was taller than Monica’s five foot eight—almost six feet—with a lot more meat on her bones. Her nondescript light brown hair was gathered into a ponytail, and her bangs were curling in the humidity.

  She glanced up when she heard Monica enter. Her face bore its usual resentful expression, her lower lip stuck out as if she was continually pouting. Monica had tried to become friends with her, but Darlene preferred to keep to herself.

  Monica put down her basket and turned to Darlene, who was leaning against the counter reading one of those magazines that grocery stores sell by the checkout lane.

  “Can you help me put these out?”

  Darlene stared at her blankly for a moment before shuffling over, the sulky expression on her face intensifying with each step.

  “I don’t see what was wrong with the stuff we carried before,” Darlene whined. “It sold, didn’t it?” She glared at Monica challengingly.

  When Monica had arrived at Sassamanash Farm, she’d discovered that the shop was selling mass-produced cranberry products—muffins preserved in plastic wrap, scones filled with trans fats to keep them fresh, and preserves that Darlene had slapped a Sassamanash Farm label on. Having made all the baked goods for her own little café, Monica got to work creating fresh products for the store.

  “I’m sure it was all very fine,” Monica said soothingly. “But customers today want fresh, homemade-tasting goodies. They can get mass-produced products anywhere. We need to sell something that’s special.”

  Monica carried the containers of salsa over to the cooler where they kept bottled water and pop for the tourists. “What happened to the salsa I brought over yesterday?”

  “Sold it.” Darlene cracked her gum and stared at Monica from under her bangs, the ends of which were caught under her smudged glasses.

  “You sold all of it?” Monica couldn’t believe it. Although locals occasionally frequented the shop, most of their sales were from tourists stopping by the farm to get a firsthand look at the cranberry bogs. The store didn’t exactly do a brisk business, except during the harvest.

  Darlene was already back at the counter, flipping through the pages of her magazine. “Some guy came in and bought them all. Said he was from the Cranberry Cove Inn. Said it was the best salsa he’d ever tasted, and he wanted to put it on the menu.”

  Monica’s heart skipped a beat. Perhaps she’d found the perfect balance for the salsa after all. And if the Cranberry Cove Inn wanted to buy it, there might be others as well. She chewed on a ragged cuticle. Goodness knows, they needed as much cash as they could get to keep the farm running. Jeff had sunk his life’s savings into it, and she wasn’t going to let him lose it if she could help it.

  Monica arranged the fresh muffins in a basket lined with a red-and-white gingham napkin and placed the scones in an orderly row on an antique silver platter she had found at an estate sale.

  She felt Darlene’s beady eyes on her as she went about tidying the shop—dusting the jars of preserves she’d made herself and creating a display with the cranberry decorated tea towels and napkins a local woman sewed for them.

  There was a noise outside, and Darlene looked up. She made her ponderous way to the window and peered out. She turned around, her scowl deepening.

  “It’s that Sam Culbert. I thought we’d seen the last of him around here. He sold the farm to your brother, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but I imagine there may still be some things they need to discuss.”

  Monica watched as Jeff and Culbert said good-bye.

  Culbert was broad shouldered with thick gray hair and slightly bowed legs. Monica was surprised to see him get into a dark, late-model Lexus.

  “That’s quite the car,” she said to
Darlene. “I didn’t realize there was so much money in cranberries.”

  Darlene snorted. “About a penny a berry—and only the unblemished ones. The rest are worthless. The Culberts own a lot more than Sassamanash Farm. They have real estate all over the county, own half the buildings in town and have a huge house with a view of the lake. You should see the place. I clean it for Mrs. Culbert once a week.” Darlene scowled again. “Must be nice. I grew up in a double-wide with secondhand furniture and hand-me-down clothes. Of course my mother, bless her soul, did the best she could seeing as how I didn’t have no daddy.”

  Monica made comforting noises to the best of her ability. Darlene would complain about the deprivation of her upbringing out of one side of her mouth while out the other side she would insist that despite their lack of means, her childhood had been nearly idyllic.

  Monica brushed some dust off her sweatshirt. “I guess I’ll be going now.”

  Darlene gave her a sour look.

  Jeff only kept Darlene on because it was hard to get anyone to work in the store when they could make more money waitressing or clerking at one of the shops in town.

  Monica walked back to her cottage, where she planned to spend the afternoon reviewing the farm’s accounts. Jeff had just borrowed a considerable sum from the bank to keep things afloat. Monica had learned a little something about business while running her café, and she hoped that she would be able to straighten things out for Jeff. She set up her laptop on the kitchen table and plugged in the flash drive that held the data from Jeff’s computer.

  Going over the accounts for Sassamanash Farm was a long and tedious process, but Monica had plenty of patience. By the time she finished examining the pages and pages of Excel spreadsheets, and all the statements from the bank, she had the answer to why Sassamanash Farm was failing to produce a profit.

  But how was she going to break the news to Jeff?

  Chapter 2

  Monica thought about what the farm’s accounts had revealed while she cleaned lettuce and sliced tomatoes for a salad. Probably the best way to break the news to Jeff was to do it quickly—like pulling off a bandage in one swift motion. She grimaced at the thought.

  Jeff arrived exactly at six o’clock, just as Monica was preheating the broiler for the steak. He and Monica had both gotten their father’s height and auburn hair that had a slight curl to it, although Jeff’s blue eyes and cleft chin came from his mother. He was wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing his forearms—the strong right one, and the left, which looked wasted in comparison. It hurt Monica to see it, and she glanced away quickly.

  “You look tired.”

  Jeff ran a hand across the back of his neck. “I am. The temperature really dropped last night and I was worried about a frost. I had to go out and check the temperature sensors in the bogs. It’d be just my luck to lose the crop the day before we plan to harvest.”

  Monica looked at him curiously. “It didn’t seem that cold to me.”

  “The cranberry bogs are lower than the surrounding land. They can run ten to twenty degrees cooler, especially at night.”

  Monica absorbed that fact. There was still so much to learn. “But what would you do if there was a frost?” She couldn’t imagine how they could blanket the acres and acres of cranberries that made up Sassamanash Farm in order to keep the fruit warm.

  “It sounds crazy,” Jeff said with a grin, “but we run the irrigation system and spray the berries with water. The water turns to ice, releasing heat, and the heat warms the berries. It’s a law of physics known as the heat of fusion.”

  “Oh,” was all Monica could say. While Jeff had excelled at science in school, she had been more inclined to have her head buried in a book—preferably a mystery. She’d started with Nancy Drew and had worked her way up to P. D. James before she was out of middle school.

  “I have some cold beer in the fridge,” she said as Jeff plopped down at the kitchen table, making the small space suddenly seem even smaller.

  Jeff scrubbed a hand across his face. “Sounds great.” He reached out his good arm, pulled open the refrigerator door which was right behind him and yanked a bottle from the cardboard six-pack Monica had stashed there. He twisted off the top and took a long pull before putting the beer down on the table and tilting his chair back on two legs.

  “How’s Gina?” Monica turned toward Jeff and leaned on the counter. “Have you heard from her lately?”

  Gina was Jeff’s mother and technically, Monica supposed, her stepmother, although she wasn’t even ten years older than Monica and looked even younger than that, since she visited the best hair salons, had a personal trainer and had had enough Botox injections to paralyze an elephant. Monica couldn’t help but think of her as the woman who stole her father away from his family. Although strictly speaking, her parents’ marriage had been on the proverbial rocks even before Gina had dug her well-manicured nails into John Albertson’s arm.

  Monica had been besotted, however, with the younger brother who had arrived a year after their marriage, and she had gradually come to realize that Gina wasn’t as bad as all that—vapid, for sure, but in a harmless sort of way.

  “She’s okay, I guess,” Jeff said in answer to Monica’s question. He took another long draft of his beer. “She’s coming to visit.”

  Monica stopped with her hand halfway to the oven door. “When?”

  Jeff glanced at his watch. “In about an hour.”

  “What?” Monica squeaked.

  Jeff shrugged. “She called last night and said she was at loose ends and could she come and stay for a bit. The timing couldn’t be worse, but what could I say?” He shrugged.

  Monica was flabbergasted. She didn’t go anywhere without making plans. Even a trip to the grocery store would be on her to-do list at least twenty-four hours in advance.

  “Where is she going to stay?”

  “She’s got a room at the Cranberry Cove Inn.” Jeff grinned. “The presidential suite probably. If there is such a thing. She’s getting in late so she said she won’t be by until sometime tomorrow. Knowing Mother, that won’t be before noon.”

  Monica pulled the broiler pan from the oven and put it on the top of the stove. “What is she going to do while we’re harvesting the berries?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Dunno. Shop, I guess.”

  Monica tried to picture Gina, with her salon processed blond hair and long, manicured nails, strolling around Cranberry Cove in her Louboutin pumps. Even the wealthier tourists, the ones who disembarked from the biggest yachts in the harbor, rarely wore anything fancier than boat shoes. Cranberry Cove was the sort of laid-back place where people walked around barefoot, in faded cutoffs and an old T-shirt.

  They ate their meal in near silence. Jeff was obviously hungry, and soon he’d polished off three-fourths of the steak, a huge helping of salad and a baked potato heaped with butter and sour cream. Monica was gratified as she watched him devour the meal.

  Jeff chased the last bit of lettuce around his plate and looked up with a smile.

  “That was delicious. Thanks.” He swiped his napkin across his mouth.

  Time to rip off the bandage, Monica thought.

  She pushed her chair back and began to gather their plates and silverware. “I’ve been going over the farm’s books,” she said, with her back to Jeff.

  “Oh.” His tone was flat.

  Monica turned around and leaned against the counter, her hands braced against the edge. Just get hold of the corner and rip, she told herself.

  “There’s a reason you haven’t been making the profit you expected.”

  Jeff’s brows rose, wrinkling his broad forehead. Monica could see a trace of pale skin at his hairline where his hat usually rested. “What’s that?”

  “Sam Culbert was cheating you. He embezzled thousands of dollars from the farm’s
accounts.”

  Jeff jumped up, nearly overturning the kitchen table in the process. The dirty cutlery, which Monica hadn’t yet collected, slid to the floor.

  “If you’re right,” Jeff began, “if you’re right, I’m going to kill the bastard.”

  • • •

  Monica was up and out of bed before her alarm went off the next morning. Today was the big day—the beginning of the cranberry harvest.

  Her clothes had been laid out the night before—jeans, an old turtleneck she used to wear around the apartment to stay warm during the fierce Chicago winters and a plain gray sweatshirt that was slightly frayed around the edges.

  She dressed quickly. It was cold, and she started to shiver. She pulled on her sweatshirt gratefully.

  It was still dark, and Monica flipped on the overhead light in the kitchen. She pulled a box of instant oatmeal from the cupboard, tore open a packet and emptied it into a bowl along with half a cup of water. While it was in the microwave, she leaned her elbows on the counter and looked out the window. The sky was overcast with a few streaks of light to the east. Monica shrugged. She had learned the old Michigan saying that if you didn’t like the weather, all you had to do was wait five minutes.

  The microwave pinged and Monica retrieved her bowl, poured some milk on top and added a handful of fresh blueberries—the remains of Sassamanash Farm’s summer crop. She ate the oatmeal and was putting the bowl in the dishwasher when there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find Jeff standing there. He was dressed similarly in jeans and a sweatshirt, and he had a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead.

  “Ready?” he said economically.

  Monica nodded and followed him down the path toward the open field that led to the cranberry bogs. Walking slightly behind him, she could see the stiff set of his shoulders and head.

  Jeff whirled around suddenly. “I can’t believe Sam Culbert would cheat me like that. There must be some mistake.” His jaw clenched tightly. “He’s a well-respected businessman for Pete’s sake.”