Pushing Up Rhubarb (A Millsferry Mystery Book 1)

by Diana Saco

  Their biggest success by far was Snakstr, the famous social media network for overweight foodies who wanted to drop a few pounds. Gizmo complained to Farm one day that he was gaining weight and needed help sticking to his new diet. This inspired them to invent a wireless automated camera system that snapped your photo every time you opened the refrigerator or pantry to get something to eat. The camera then instantly uploaded these caught-in-the-act images—or “Snakshots”—to the Snakstr website and other linked social networks. The idea was to compel you to stick to your diet on pain of having your family and friends see a new Snakshot every time you cheated.

  Snakstr shamed thirty pounds off Gizmo’s body and fattened his and Farm’s respective bank accounts by the millions. With venture capital to spare, they cooked up the idea for Steamy’s. More than a hangout with great food, it became a place where Gizmo could continue innovating to his heart’s content, and Farm could play classic steampunk movies on the big screen displays in the lounge.

  I had already settled into a booth, sipping an iced tea and idly watching the Jules Verne inspired 1961 film Mysterious Island, when Farm plopped down next to me.

  “We’ll always have Paris,” he quoted.

  “I’d settle for a French Onion soup,” I said.

  He looked up at the screen. “But look, it’s the scene with the giant bird.” He turned to me then, mischief dancing in his eyes as he deposited a plate on the table that I hadn’t noticed he was holding. “Can I interest you in a chicken kebab instead?”

  I laughed.

  “Cool timing, right?” he asked rhetorically.

  “As always.”

  “Where’s your date?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes, not in the mood for Farm’s love-life teases—as in, I should get one. I reminded him once that he was single, too. He had replied with another classic movie line.

  “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”

  What a goofy little psycho. Of course, by then I had figured out that he had a thing for Scarlet Peebles, our colorful M.E. I thought it a perfect match—in an Addams Family kind of way. The Doc cut up dead bodies for a living, and Farm was a horror movie fanatic. He also ran the film-review website Creepy Corner, where Chloe Owens had seen my guest blogs. Despite Farm’s fascination with things that go bump in the dark (of a movie theater!), I was certain he’d pass out if he ever saw a real dead body. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t gotten around to asking the Doc out. He was probably intimidated by her. Pity he couldn’t find his courage because I was pretty sure the M.E. liked him, too. At the moment, however, he didn’t have much of a love life either.

  “I’m meeting Al,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said interestedly. “I heard you were working on the bake-off murder.”

  “Slow down, Watson. We don’t know if it’s a murder yet.”

  Just then, Gizmo showed up, overhearing the last part of my comment. “Who’s murder?” he asked.

  “No one’s,” I said.

  “Nina and Big Al are working on the Millsferry Bake-Off incident,” Farm explained.

  “What happened?”

  “Dude, you haven’t heard? A lady died!”

  “That’s terrible. How did she die?” Gizmo asked.

  “We’re not sure, yet,” I said. “One of the contestants at the bake-off, a woman named Monica Munch, had a reaction to something she ate. For a while, we were worried that some of the food was contaminated, but so far no one else has gotten sick.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief. But it’s like I tell Farm, too much sugary stuff will kill you,” Gizmo added earnestly. He’d gotten a bit preachy about healthy eating since losing his weight. But he was so sincere in his concern that most of us didn’t mind it.

  “Well, it’s not like that processed crap they sell on the mainland,” Farm defended. “At least it’s home-made. And probably 100% organic. You gotta love this town,” he added, flashing a smile and referring to the decade-old city ordinance banning the growth and sale of conventionally farmed, mass-market produce in Millsferry.

  The town didn’t require the use of organic foods in restaurants and home kitchens, but most of the residents preferred them and believed in supporting local growers. As a result, pretty much everything that was made on the island was free of synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, GMO’s, industrial solvents, chemical additives, hormones, antibiotics, and anything else that doesn’t and shouldn’t already exist in food naturally. Thanks to this healthy foundation, nationwide surveys consistently showed that Millsferryzians were less prone to stomach ailments, food allergies, and a variety of the more serious neurological problems associated with steady diets of industrially grown and processed foods. Gizmo was right, of course, that eating baked goods all the time wasn’t healthy either, no matter how organic all the ingredients were. But it’d take a lot more than one treat, which is what I told him.

  “I’m sure she wasn’t done in by a cupcake, Gizmo. We’re waiting for the M.E.’s report to see if we even have a case. In the meantime, Al and I are meeting to go over our interviews just to stay on top of the investigation.”

  “Slow week?” Farm asked concerned.

  “Not really, but we did just wrap up a big job, so we were available when Bruno asked for help.”

  “It’s fate then. Maybe you’ll meet the love of your life on this case,” he said.

  “Speaking of, how’s Scarlet?” I asked, turning the tables on him.

  He immediately clamped his mouth shut and turned away from us, probably so we wouldn’t see the blush that crept up his face. But I could tell because the tips of his ears were turning red. He was saved by Al’s arrival.

  “Hey, Uncle Boudreaux Bunyan!” Farm greeted, recovering quickly.

  I nearly laughed my drink into my nose. Uncle Boudreaux jokes were a standard among Cajun comedians. And at least two Minnesota towns claimed to be the birthplace of Paul Bunyan. Al took a lot of friendly ribbing for his unusual background.

  “Pull up a booth,” Farm continued. “How about a nice order of lye fish?”

  Al grimaced and turned to me. “I know he’s your friend, Sha, but if he tries to feed me that Scandi’ poisson, I’m tossin’ it back, then. Real hard, too.”

  I always thought it was unfortunate that the French word for “fish” was similar to the English word “poison,” but in this case, a person could be forgiven for the confusion. The boys were talking about lutefisk, a Nordic dish made from dried whitefish reconstituted in lye to a gelatinous consistency. It was a traditional holiday meal for Minnesotans of Norwegian or Swedish ancestry. Al had narrowly escaped eating it during all his years in Minnesota. He couldn’t be blamed for threatening physical harm to anyone who tried to feed it to him now.

  “You’d better duck, Farm,” I suggested.

  “Okay, okay. How about a nice potato lefse?” he asked.

  Al nodded, accepting the implied apology. “And some mashed peas with.”

  “Garçon,” Farm called out to no one, snapping his fingers for effect. “Bring this man a mashed-pea sandwich wrap and a side of Jambalaya, hold the lutefisk.”

  Al sighed.

  *****

  A short while later, Farm and Gizmo left so that Al and I could discuss the case in private, a professional courtesy I appreciated. I kicked things off by telling Al about my exchange with Chloe, including the fact that she admitted to disliking Monica. I also told him about the new twin in town. He already knew because, as luck would have it, he was winding down his interview with Marvin when Maxine Moffit showed up.

  “So you know, Sha, that man is one silly couillon there. He’s wailin’ like some big bebe until that sister shows up. Then he’s all ‘Maxi! Maxi! You’re here!’ All happy like. It got me thinkin’ he’s leakin’ crocodile tears there?”

  “I don’t know, Al. He wasn’t faking it the other day when he showed up at the Loop and saw his wife’s body on the ground.”

  “So maybe he likes both of those sister
s,” he suggested.

  That was an interesting theory. Dr. Moffit did seem overly concerned about her brother-in-law.

  “What did you think of the sister?” I asked.

  “I think she thinks he did it.”

  “Really? How come?”

  By way of explanation, Al mimicked his exchange with Marvin Munch and Maxine Moffit. “Me to Munch—‘So tell me again where you were when your wife died?’ Ya know, Sha, the way we get them to repeat their story just to make sure it doesn’t change. Except instead of Munch answerin’, that sister jumps in. ‘You were havin’ breakfast, isn’t that what you told me, Marv?’ Like she’s coachin’ him. I also asked him how he and his wife got along. And again, the sister butts in, all smilin’, and says, ‘Oh, they were like newlyweds most of the time. So lovin’. So considerate with each other.’ ”

  “How would she know that?” I asked dubiously. “She came around asking for directions to their house. Doesn’t sound to me like someone who visited them often.”

  “I asked her that, Sha. She said she had been meanin’ to visit for the last couple of years, yeah. But she couldn’t get away from work. She said she and her sister talked on the phone every week, thereabouts. So I figure we should check the phone records, ya think?”

  “Yeah. Definitely worth looking into,” I said. “What does she do, by the way?” I asked.

  “Retired college professor.”

  “She seems a little young to be retired,” I suggested.

  “I had the same idea. I’m thinking there’s more to it than she’s lettin’ on.”

  “Did she say where she taught before retiring?”

  “Charlton School of Business,” Al said.

  “In Charlton, Mass.?”

  “Weh,” he affirmed in his Cajun-peppered French.

  “That’s definitely close enough for visits. Maybe Monica visited her,” I added.

  “That’s the funny part,” Al continued. “I said to Marvin, not the sister, ‘I didn’t know Charlton had itself a college, then.’ He took the bait and answered sayin’, ‘Oh, yeah, a really nice community college.’ So I asked him, ‘Did the two of you visit there often, ya think?’ He says, ‘Monica not as much.’ I looked at that sister, and she started lookin’ upset, like she knows what’s comin’. But before I can ask Marvin if he went alone, she interrupts and starts askin’ if we have any suspects. So Marvin pipes up then and asks if we’ve questioned Chloe Owens. Next thing I know, he’s tellin’ the sister about how Monica and Chloe were enemies and what a terrible person Chloe is, that she likes to scare kids. So the sister rounds on me then and asks why we haven’t arrested Chloe. I politely explained that we don’t arrest people. We only do the investigatin’. But that I wasn’t sure the sheriff had anythin’ to arrest her for. What could I do, Sha? I thanked them for their time and left.”

  “Do you think Marvin has been having an affair with Maxine?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I’m sure he was visitin’ her up at that college, that’s for sure.”

  “Okay, we’ll run background checks on them tomorrow.”

  “Owens lady, too, Sha?” he asked.

  “Yeah, her, too,” I said. I didn’t really suspect Chloe. She was disarmingly straightforward about her dislike of Monica Munch, which suggested she had nothing to hide. But with so many clues pointing her way, we’d be expected to check her out. And who knows, we might find something that would help rule her out.

  7. Body Counts on the Rise

  Early the next morning, I booted up my home computer intending to get started on the background checks over breakfast before heading downtown. I noticed a text message from Dottie, who was just in the next room.

  “Did we have a fight?” I wondered aloud.

  I opened the messaging app and found a link to a widget.

  “Okay, I’ll bite.”

  I clicked the link and let it install the associated application. The widget banner read “World Population Counter” and showed a number in the billions apparently updating in real time.

  “Hey, Aunt Dottie?” I called out, getting up and going to the doorway. “Why do I want to know that the population of the world is over 7 billion . . . and counting?”

  “Reminder,” she explained. Badly, I thought.

  “Reminder of what?”

  “People. Lots.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  She got up and walked past me into the study.

  “Look,” she said.

  I joined her in front of the display and looked at the rising numbers on the counter.

  “Each. A story,” she said. “Many,” she added, pointing again. “See?”

  “Yeah,” I said automatically. “But why are we talking about stories?”

  “Their stories. You tell. You write.”

  I was beginning to suspect collusion again. “Aunt Dottie, did you talk to Chloe today?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Okay, but—” I began.

  “Last night,” she added.

  “Ah. I get it.”

  “Good,” she said with finality. “Stop jackassing.”

  Dottie left the room before I could respond. Frankly, I didn’t know how to respond. I also didn’t know “jackass” could be used as a verb. Obviously, Chloe and Aunt Dottie, two people I’d only recently met, were conspiring to give me unsolicited advice about my life’s ambition. Presumptuous didn’t even begin to describe them. But instead of feeling less than enthusiastic about their intervention, an image of s’mores popped into my head—as in warm and sweet and gooey. I was surprised to discover that I rather liked their concern, even if I didn’t agree with their idea about how easy it was to write.

  So what if each person was a story? The trick was in being able to tell a story well. I wasn’t interested in simply uncovering and conveying facts about a life. That was detective work. A great novel, on the other hand, went way beyond facts—if it even dealt with facts at all. Literary writing was about conveying ideas, emotions, myth, legend, experience, even enlightenment. A beautiful story explored the sublime in the epic and found the epic in the sublime.

  Farm asked me once what I wanted most in the world.

  “To write something marvelous,” I said. “A truly marvelous novel.”

  “Oh, a movel,” he said, immediately turning it into a running joke between us. Farm knew I liked word games. Playing along with me was his way of showing encouragement. He told me once that he was used to being around writers because his aunt was a famous erotica writer and former porn star. I was never sure when I could take what he was saying seriously.

  My “movel” was a different matter, however. I took it very seriously. I studied lists of best sellers for years. I eventually concluded that the fame of at least some of those authors owed as much to luck as it did to talent because, as a rule, best-seller lists included surprisingly little literature. If I wanted to write a book that was sure to sell, I was better off starting with something unliterary. I would have to write a cookbook with a number in the title—55 ways to roast pork, 20-minute sauces, 99 bottles of craft beers you can brew at home. Or maybe it’d have to be a romance with lots of torn lingerie in it, or the latest diet study, some kind of pop-psych motivational guide, a homicide thriller, or maybe even a combination of all of these genres. That’s the type of book that would sell—The Diet Self-Help Romantic Murder-Mystery Cookbook . . . for Dum-Dums.

  The idea depressed me. Channeling Agatha Christie and Julia Child was hard enough without having to add Deepak Chopra and Nathan Pritikin to the mix. Diet books were out. I had read enough of them in my life to know that modern Western society was at odds with healthy living. The story I’d write would talk about the evils of the food industry, and about how we no longer moved our bodies or our bowels. It would have to use big, ugly words like “biotechnology” and “socio-politics” and “macro-economic trends.” And who would find that interesting? (Actually, I’d find it interesting, but Michael Pollan h
ad that particular niche admirably staked out.)

  As for self-help books, I just wasn’t well adjusted enough to tackle that topic. Well, what literary writer was? Social dysfunction bordering on psychosis had been the wellspring of great literature from the moment the first cave man chiseled the evidence of his tortured soul into a cold slab of rock to memorialize his take on the human condition. Working out my issues through meditation and motivation would squander a valuable dramatic resource. If I wanted to write the great American novel, it made better business sense to leverage my repressed memories, not exorcise them.

  Watching the digits rise on Aunt Dottie’s widget wasn’t helping. She wanted me to draw inspiration from it, but I didn’t read it as proof of how much source material was out there. Rather, I saw it as an indicator of the whopping target audience I wanted to reach. Those were potential readers, with a new one being born every fraction of a second. So what if the world had billions of stories to offer. I wasn’t interested in writing tons of stories. I wanted to offer the world one story and make it grand enough to move billions.

  Martial arts actor Bruce Lee was famous for being able to do a one-inch punch. He could coordinate major muscles and joints in a sequence that started with snapping his legs together into a twisting hip rotation that powered the forward thrust of his shoulder, arm, and wrist. These timed movements channeled their combined kinetic energy into a single, short, explosive punch. Why couldn’t I do that with prose—punch the world in the heart with a single story? Why couldn’t I be the Bruce Lee of writing?