Pushing Up Rhubarb (A Millsferry Mystery Book 1)

by Diana Saco

  The entire courtroom was stunned into silence.

  *****

  Several moments passed as the layers of irony sunk in. Monica had wanted to teach Chloe a lesson about respecting the craft by perfecting recipes before using them in competition. But she failed to observe her own standards. She hadn’t developed a recipe for poisoned rhubarb. She had catastrophically miscalculated what would count as a non-lethal dose. In fact, she hadn’t even followed the most basic of protocols in baking. Instead of keeping her ingredients in separate containers, she had cross-contaminated the oxalic acid with an unknown quantity of sugar. And in lieu of adding level measures of her key ingredient, she had tossed the mix onto the rhubarb in clumsy scoopfuls.

  For Maxi, the irony of her sister’s death was more profound. That in giving away one of her kidneys to save her twin sister’s life, Monica made herself too vulnerable. Even so-called non-lethal doses of certain toxins were enough to kill her, but they might not have killed anyone else. If Monica hadn’t been so worried about hurting someone, it’s possible no one would have died. The judges, all healthy individuals with two kidneys and strong stomachs, would have suffered pretty much the same set of symptoms I experienced the week before. They would have been uncomfortable, but they would have survived it. By trying to avoid her sister’s death decades earlier and anyone’s death at the bake-off, Monica unwittingly condemned herself.

  I was worried about Chloe’s reaction the most. She had her face in her hands and was trembling slightly, like someone trying desperately to avoid losing control. The irony here was that the lesson Monica set out to teach Chloe would have been lost on her because she wasn’t as invested in winning. She just liked annoying Monica. I’m sure she understood intellectually that Monica caused her own death. But a part of her had reveled in the conflict between them, mocking Monica for her obsession with rules and ribbons. Despite Chloe’s complaints about the albatross, she enjoyed playing the part of “that Chloe Owens,” the renegade. That’s the part of her that was wondering right now if she might have pushed it too far. That’s the part that was hurting.

  Judge Ota cleared his throat to speak, and that little bit of noise was enough to break the spell. People started to cough and shift and mumble as Ota said, “Bailiff, let’s bring the jury back in.”

  Jimmy left and returned moments later with the jurors shuffling in behind them. I noticed several of them looking around at the crowd curiously. From our demeanor, a few of the sharper jurors caught on that they had missed something significant. They seemed eager to be let in on whatever had just transpired, but they were going to be disappointed.

  After the jurors were reseated, Judge Ota called the court to order and then said, “Mr. Bingham, would you like to make a motion.”

  Loyal stood up. “I would, Your Honor. In light of the video evidence we’ve just seen, which completely exonerates the defendant of any wrongdoing, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts moves to dismiss all charges against Chloe Owens.”

  I heard a couple of “whoops” from the gallery. I watched as Mason hugged Chloe, and then she glanced back at me. Her eyes were sad, but she had a small smile on her face. I must have mimicked her features because something in her face suggested she was glad I understood her mixed emotions.

  After a moment, Judge Ota rapped his gavel, calling everyone to order again. “Ms. Owens, you are free to go. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your service. Court is adjourned.”

  We all rose at the bailiff’s prompt. After Ota left the courtroom, I couldn’t resist any more. I rounded the bar and practically lunged at Chloe. Thankfully, she caught me.

  “You did it, Nina,” she sighed into my ear. “You figured out the hero of the story.”

  I pulled back to look at her. “I wasn’t expecting it to be Monica,” I said.

  Chloe nodded. Her smile was bittersweet.

  18. Twenty-Three and a Half Days

  It took less than a month for the dust to settle after the trial and some semblance of order to return to our lives. I would have preferred if it had taken exactly thirty-seven days to find our new normal. Then I would know that we were all on the right track. Even without my lucky number to guide me, however, I had to admit—things felt right.

  *****

  The pieces started falling into place a couple of days after the trial when Al said he didn’t have enough general office work to keep me busy eight hours a day. He suggested I work part-time in the afternoons and stay at home in the mornings to finally start that book I’d always been threatening to write. Again, I sensed that people were conspiring behind my back—for my benefit, but conspiring nonetheless. He was back to calling me “Sha,” so I knew he didn’t mean it as punishment.

  “You’ve got six months before you get your PI license reinstated, Sha. That should be enough time to write at least two books, ya think?”

  Aunt Dottie thought this was a wonderful idea, and so did Chloe.

  On my first morning as a part-time writer, Chloe came into my office unannounced and laid a blank sheet of paper in front of me. It was a metaphor, of course. Except for scribbling ideas, I didn’t write long-hand. I wrote on computers. But I played along.

  “What do you see, Nina?”

  “A piece of paper.”

  “Don’t be willfully obtuse.”

  I took a breath.

  “Now take a deep breath,” she said.

  “I just did!”

  “Take another one. And tell me—what do you see?”

  I took another deep breath—smirking. I wasn’t in the mood to play, but I opened my mouth anyway trusting something would come to mind.

  “Okay,” Chloe interrupted, “I’ll tell you what I see.”

  I clamped my mouth shut and took advantage of the reprieve.

  “When I look at this blank piece of paper,” she began, “I see a tall mountain I want to climb,” she said with wonder. “I see a vast ocean teaming with possibilities,” she said with awe. “I see a blank canvas that I can’t wait to start filling,” she said with eagerness. “Now you,” she instructed.

  “Fine,” I said relenting. “When I see this blank piece of paper, I see a snowy mountain I want to descend—but I have no skis. I see a vast ocean teaming with sharks—but I have no boat. I see a huge canvas that I need to start filling—but I’m fresh out of ink and ideas.”

  “Okay, so a lack of imagination isn’t your problem,” Chloe observed. “But I do see a pattern. You’re treating the blank page as a problem. It isn’t. It’s your playground, Nina. It’s the one place in this world that you get to control completely.”

  “But I have no idea what to write.” I think I actually pouted when I said it.

  “That’s because you’re editing instead of writing. You’re already focused on results. Turn off the editor and turn on the creator,” she said.

  I frowned trying to figure out where to begin.

  As if reading my mind, Chloe suggested, “Why not start by telling our story, this story, your story? How we met, how you’ve always wanted to write, how you helped solve the mystery of who killed Monica Munch.”

  We both winced when she said that. It was still a tender subject. “I don’t know if I can write about Monica,”

  “Why not? Her story needed to be told, too. What she did was sort of brave, really. And no one would have known about it if you hadn’t put the pieces together and persuaded Maxi to unlock that tablet.”

  “You sound like you’ve forgiven her,” I observed.

  Chloe thought about it a moment. “Well, it turns out she was right about me. I was starting to get irked that she was always winning. So then I pretended the contests didn’t matter. The truth was that they mattered, and that Monica was always putting more time and effort into her recipes. So I’m going to do things a little differently now.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’m going to taste everything first. So what if I second-guess myself. The alternative, a
s we’ve learned, is way too risky.”

  “Well, I’ll volunteer to be your beta-tester for trial recipes,” I said. “Or is it beta-taster?”

  Chloe chuckled. “Good, because I’m working on a new recipe now. So you start writing, and then swing by my house on your way home from work this evening.”

  *****

  After that first day, I fell into a pattern that became not unbearable by the end of the first week and almost workable by the second. It consisted of putting words to paper every morning—what people call “writing.” I would go to the office in the afternoon to handle paperwork and billing while Al did all the detective work. Chloe and I saw each other practically every day as she tried out recipes on my palate, checked my writing progress, and occasionally whispered wonderful things in my ear.

  On day eleven, we heard that Maxine Moffit had resigned her job at the bed-and-breakfast in Cape Cod and was moving to Millsferry. It seemed she was starting to come to terms with her sister’s choices and was now prepared to start living her own life. Farm had gotten all of the details somehow and explained that she was taking an apartment downtown. She had apparently decided that it was one thing to stay with her brother-in-law while visiting town for her sister’s funeral and the subsequent murder trial, quite another to be moving in with the man months after his wife died. They would wait the requisite year before rekindling their romance. I still didn’t understand the Moffit twins’ taste in men. But when I allowed myself to forget that it was Marvin, I found Maxi’s story incredibly romantic—giving up her one true love for her sister’s sake and then being reunited with him when the sacrifice was no longer needed. Okay, so it was more Jane Austen meets Woodie Allen, but why quibble over the details. Love is love.

  Speaking of love, it was also around this time that I learned that Farm and Scarlet were finally dating. I was about to congratulate him for finding his courage when I learned that he hadn’t asked Scarlet out. Rather it was Scarlet who got tired of waiting for Farm to come around, so she decided to call and ask him out. I took more points off his scorecard when he called me during the date.

  “What’s that noise?” I asked.

  “Balls rolling, pins dropping,” he said ecstatically.

  “Farm, did you take her bowling on your first date?”

  “Yeah, Man, and get this—it was her idea! It turns out she loves bowling! Like—me, too?!”

  An M.E. who bowls—something about that seemed very Millsferryzianish.

  “Hey, maybe you should see if Chloe likes to bowl,” he said. “We could double date.”

  “Sure, I’ll ask her sometime.”

  *****

  I experienced an unexpected loss around Day Fourteen of our post-trial recovery, and I did not see this one coming. Aunt Dottie moved out. She announced her plans after my morning’s writing session and before I was supposed to leave for my other job, which I totally blew off given my personal emergency at home. Al said he understood, but that he didn’t think I could change Dottie’s mind. I tried everything. I called Chloe first. She simply admitted that she cried all day when Aunt Dottie left her, which was on the day Dottie started her secret five-day family retreat.

  Remembering the horrible moment at trial when I thought Dottie might have poisoned the rhubarb at Chloe’s house, I asked Chloe why she had believed it, too, if Dottie had already officially left her. She said she had looked for her the days following her departure and that she didn’t know where Aunt Dottie was. At that charged moment at trial, when Chloe had realized what I was thinking, she considered it, too, and thought Dottie might have come back to the house that day. Aunt Dottie’s actual whereabouts were still a mystery, by the way. No one except Judge Ota seemed to know anything about her family retreat, and he wouldn’t share any details.

  Thinking about Ota made me decide to bring the law in on my efforts to keep Aunt Dottie with me, so I called Bruno.

  “But she wants to run away from home!” I whined.

  “I warned you this day would come,” Bruno said. “As I recall, you couldn’t wait for it to happen.”

  “Well, now I don’t want it to happen.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” he asked.

  “Can’t you stop her?”

  “She’s not a child, Nina. Aunt Dottie can go where she pleases. She’s a grown up. Do you know what a grown up is?”

  “Ha, ha!”

  “And Nina?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t try bolting the door to lock her in. I don’t want to have to come over there to break her out and arrest you for kidnapping.”

  “Fine,” I said peevishly. So much for my fallback plan.

  I hung up and flounced back onto my bed dejectedly. I heard a knock on the door and saw Aunt Dottie standing there.

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to talk you out of leaving, is there?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re fixed. Writing now. Chloe fixed, too. Trusting now.”

  She dusted her hands off in that universal gesture of job-well-done.

  “Yes, two for one. I guess you’re pretty proud of yourself,” I said.

  “Proud of you, too.”

  She came over to where I was sitting on the edge of the bed. Raising my face, she patted my cheek, hugged me to her bosom and stroked my hair. It was tender and maternal and haunting. My eyes watered as I suddenly remembered my own mother and missed her more acutely than I had in a long while. Aunt Dottie sensed the change and moved back.

  “Don’t sad,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, sniffing. “Where are you going, anyway?”

  “Randall.”

  “You’re moving in with Randall Kirkland?”

  “Yes. He’s broken. Needs me.”

  “Does he know that?”

  “Course not.”

  “Lucky bastard.”

  “Language,” she said, shaking her finger at me.

  I pursed my lips but didn’t change my mind. Randall Kirkland was one lucky couillon!

  *****

  On Day Fifteen, I missed Aunt Dottie.

  I was considering dropping by Randall’s unannounced when Farm called to cheer me up. He said he had an idea for a blog he wanted to hire me to write. It was based on something I said to him once that had stuck with him.

  “It was a couple of years back,” he said. “Shortly after we opened Steamy’s. You came in, and I asked you how your day went. And you said, ‘Nothing ordinary happened today.’ Then you went on to tell me about all the extraordinary things that had happened to you that day.”

  “Did I just solve a major case or something?” I asked, trying to remember this banner day.

  “No, that’s the funny part. There was nothing special about that day. You told me that you had this amazing cup of coffee at a new café that opened on King Street.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember that place. Still makes great coffee,” I said.

  “And then you described going to the Town Pasture, and how perfect it was, with a slight fog still misting over the ground, and the early morning sun ‘painting ribbons on the grass,’ ” he recited nostalgically.

  I didn’t know someone could feel nostalgic about another person’s experience. “I said that?”

  “Yup, and you said even Pippy was in a good mood, and that she seemed to be thanking you for the grapes you brought her.”

  “She does love her grapes. What else happened that day?”

  “You said you went for a walk in your neighborhood, and that the elderly Italian woman who lived across the street called you over to her yard. When you reached her, she shoved a zeppola in your face and told you to ‘Mangia!’ You took the zeppola and noticed the dough was still warm—fresh out of the oven—but the vanilla and chocolate custards on top were firm and rich looking. When you bit into it, you said the donut part felt like it dissolved in your mouth while the thick custard lingered there. You said you hardly ever go walking in
your neighborhood. But you were grateful you did that day because you couldn’t imagine missing that flawless moment when a kind neighbor lady let you taste a piece of the heaven she created in her kitchen.”

  “Okay, Farm, you’re making me hungry. What’s your point? Do you want me to write a food blog for the Steamy’s website?” I asked.

  “No, not a food blog. More of a life-appreciation blog. That’s what made the conversation memorable. You weren’t describing extraordinary events. You were finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. That’s one of your gifts, Nina.”

  Inwardly, I was thrilled by the compliment, but I didn’t want to seem over eager.

  “Is this a paying job?” I asked.

  “Only if you deliver,” he said.

  “What are the terms?”

  “One blog a week, on the day of your choice but always that day, between 500 and 1000 words, emailed to me, and with no spelling or grammar errors.”

  “Of course,” I said, offended that he felt he needed to add that. “And I can write about anything?”

  “Yup, anything that fits the theme ‘nothing ordinary happened today.’ Oh, and the topic must be suitable for all ages.”

  After Farm hung up, I began remembering the day he’d been talking about. Ironically, I had started out that morning feeling in a rut and wondering whether anything could happen to turn the day around. I went to the coffee shop that morning. When I tasted the coffee, I realized it wasn’t the momentous discovery at the end of a lifetime of tedious work that made life interesting. The things that made life interesting were all the little discoveries one made each day while living an ordinary life. Like discovering the perfect cup of coffee. The problem wasn’t in actually having a dull life but in experiencing it that way. The day turned around for me when I made a conscious effort to look for the remarkable in what I was doing. For the rest of that day, I became an explorer in my own life.