Crops and Robbers

by Paige Shelton

  “Only in a roundabout way,” Betsy added.

  Jake twisted her arm.

  “You’ll have to kill us both,” I said. “And we’ll fight you.”

  “I’ve got the knife. I bet I’ll win.” He laughed maniacally. “I couldn’t believe it when Joan insulted you at the market. I was the one who had Betsy bring her out to your farm. I was defending you, Becca. I wanted her to see your farm, see your barn, see the good work you put into your products.”

  “You did not,” Betsy said, proving she might have been even dumber than I was when it came to talking to a killer. “I think I figured it out, Becca. He wanted to kill Joan and he saw the perfect opportunity to frame you for her death. Your mother being here just gave him another idea.”

  “Shut up,” he said, wielding the knife with incompetent vigor.

  “I still don’t know why you wanted her dead, Jake. Money?” I said.

  He laughed again. “I put everything I had into my restaurant, but no, that’s not why I wanted her dead. It was when her son threatened to ruin me and hurt my aunt that I knew they had to go. Nobel’s next, but I need the right opportunity.”

  “I was getting to that, but I do believe the threats from Nobel were real if that matters at all,” Betsy said.

  “I called the police, Jake,” I said.

  “I heard. They have no idea I’m here. You didn’t say a word about me. I waited until you’d made the call to show myself.”

  He had a point.

  “They have your fingerprints,” I said.

  “Not possible. I wiped everything down.”

  I shook my head slowly. “Not everything.”

  “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  “You’ll find out soon enough. The police are on their way.”

  “We’ll have our business completed by the time they get here,” Jake said as he grabbed Betsy’s arm and shoved her toward the barn.

  Bizarrely, the Clash’s song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” played in my head. It must have been some sort of coping mechanism. I felt like giggling and screaming at the same time. Jake wasn’t going to give me a chance to choose anyway. I was going to have to go to the barn, and I was going to have to figure out a way to fight him off. He had the knife, but it wasn’t like it was a gun. It would take more precision and skill than a gun required. I’d wielded few knives in my time—okay, so it was at fruit, but still, I knew how to handle them. Maybe I could get the advantage with my own weapon.

  The lock on the door still hadn’t been fixed, so Jake pushed it open. I noticed he had latex gloves on his hands. Wiping things down last time must have been more work than he’d thought. He reached around and flipped up the light switch. My barn was spotless clean, but the warm light wasn’t as welcoming as it usually was.

  “Get over there,” he said to me as he pointed at the sink area with the knife. He closed the door after I entered. He took hold of Betsy’s arm again and forced her to the other side of the worktable.

  “Now, I want you to get your own knife out of the drawer. I know where you keep them. Grab the handle and then set it on the worktable,” Jake said.

  “No.”

  He sighed. “Then I’ll hit you over the head like I did your mother and get the prints myself, but first I’ll kill her and you’ll have to watch.”

  And when I woke up, I’d just tell the police what happened. I didn’t vocalize my thought. He was clearly coming unhinged and didn’t see how implausible his plan was.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but there won’t be evidence that I killed her. Just evidence that you did. Your mother didn’t see my face. I wore a ski mask. She’ll never be able to identify me. It’ll be your word against mine with all the real evidence pointing to you,” Jake said.

  My mother didn’t see his face, but she smelled him, and the fingerprints on Hobbit’s collar should be enough, but I couldn’t be sure. There was no good option, except that if I took a knife into my hand, maybe I could try to make an offensive move.

  “Again, I’ll kill her if you do anything funny.”

  “He’s going to kill me anyway, Becca. Don’t do it.”

  Jake thought for a second. “Okay, then after I kill Betsy, I’ll kill your dog and make you watch that, too. I’m a lot stronger than you, Becca. You can’t move quickly enough to get away.”

  It wasn’t that I put more value on my dog’s life than a human’s, but his threatening Hobbit made me burn with a new level of anger, fear, and pure hatred. It wasn’t a good feeling, but I hoped I could do something constructive with it.

  “Jake, think about Viola. She’s going to be devastated,” I said.

  “She still doesn’t know I’m the killer. She’ll never know. She thinks it’s Nobel. She tried to sic you on him. Now she’ll just think the Robins women are crazy. Get the knife. Quit stalling,” Jake said.

  I turned slowly, hoping my mind would come up with something I could do. I knew that if I could hang on just a few more minutes, Sam would come to the rescue, but no other stall tactics popped into my mind.

  I reached into a drawer and pulled out a knife. I was moving slowly. Suddenly, the door burst open. A sense of relief flooded my system. I looked over, expecting to see Sam, his weapon drawn and his icy blue eyes on the target.

  But it wasn’t Sam—the bark gave her away.

  Hobbit, moving at a speed I didn’t know she had in her, flew through the door and jumped high into the air. My mind would remember that she looked as if she’d sprouted wings. The force of her speed and the length of her long paws landed right where she’d intended: on Jake’s chest.

  They both went down, and then suddenly Hobbit was off him and moving toward me. Jake was flat on his back on the ground. He’d hit his head on the floor and seemed slightly dazed, but the knife was still in his hand.

  “Move, Betsy!” I yelled.

  She did, but not fast enough. Jake gathered his senses and threw the knife right at her. His throw was awkward and off target slightly, but it looked like it would hit Betsy in the back.

  I didn’t think, but leapt up to the table, landing on my belly. I put my arm out, right in the path of the knife.

  My maneuver led to a flesh wound on my forearm, but at least it wasn’t the arm that had been recently grazed by a bullet.

  I hadn’t noticed the flashing lights outside the open door, but I saw them behind Sam as he ran into the barn, weapon drawn as I’d imagined a moment before. He sized up the situation quickly and told Jake (in words that probably shouldn’t be repeated here) to stay where he was.

  Hobbit stepped back around the table and put a long paw on Jake’s chest. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Twenty-nine

  “I happen to love your jam,” Betsy said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “So, you don’t think Joan said she didn’t like it to keep me from having to be involved with all those terrible people?” I’d come to the conclusion that Joan had pushed the Staffords out of working with the restaurant association for their own good. Miriam and Joan had been good friends and when Joan saw what was happening with the owners and their greediness, she wanted to make sure Miriam and her family were kept safely away from any danger. It was a noble way to ruin a friendship and a story that Miriam thought was probably true. I’d shared it with her when she’d stopped by my house the day before to show me a sketch of her next work of art, a painting of me and the rat in her kitchen.

  “No, I’m pretty sure she just didn’t like it, but I do,” Betsy said.

  “Of course you do. It’s the best,” my mom said.

  For some reason, we laughed—all of us.

  We were at Bistro, enjoying Betsy’s hospitality. In celebration of Mom’s release from jail and the discovery of the real killer, we were gathered for dinner. Betsy, Mom, Dad, Allison, her husband, Tom, Ian, and Sam.

  Bistro had become Betsy’s. Nobel had simply signed it over to her with the promise that he could work there again when and if he was released fr
om jail. He wasn’t a business owner anyway, he was a recipe guy. We all thought he didn’t have a firm grasp on his illegal activities, but as Betsy had said, he was odd and maybe just not able to clearly see his guilty ways. Betsy had felt plenty of guilt about not giving the list to the police earlier. She’d had a loyalty to Nobel that now seemed horribly misplaced, but Sam had tried to tell her that she’d done the right thing eventually.

  Jake had confessed to the killings and explained that Betsy hadn’t had anything to do with either of them. She’d merely petted Hobbit before leaving my house that day and probably inadvertently touched her collar then.

  Jake said that Joan had told him she asked Betsy to leave my house because she knew Jake would follow them. Apparently, Jake had been following Joan for a number of days. He hadn’t heard from her regarding his demand that the association come clean, so he’d started following her; he wouldn’t say or do anything, but just let her know he was watching her. His continued stalking, apparently, had been the catalyst for the heated meeting between her and Nobel, a meeting that led to Nobel threatening Jake and Viola. Nobel claimed that he never told his mother about the threats and that she had only wanted all the illegal and unethical activity to stop. We’d never know for sure.

  Joan didn’t think Jake was truly homicidal, but she didn’t want Betsy to learn about the association’s secrets. She wanted to get the confrontation over with and keep everyone else she cared about in the dark.

  I had been the one to tell him about the note with Manny’s name. At the time, I didn’t know what it meant, but I would always feel terrible for mentioning it. Always. It was because of the note that Jake confronted Manny, not sure he was involved or how, but Manny admitted to taking kickbacks. Apparently, he offered to compensate Jake nicely to keep him quiet, but not without throwing in his own threats. The association had gotten away with far too much and had too much power. Even Manny had thought they were untouchable, but he hadn’t deserved to die.

  Jake wouldn’t admit to destroying Bo’s onion tables. We had to chalk that one up to random vandalism, but I would always wonder.

  Nobel was in all kinds of trouble, but not for murdering people. His charges were more like theft and fraud and threatening harm to others. There would be no way to prove who had been involved in the poisoning that might not have even been a poisoning, but Betsy guessed that Nobel had somehow been in the middle of it. I’d promised Elliot Nelson an exclusive interview just as soon as Sam told me what I could say to the press.

  All the members of the association, particularly the original four, were in the process of a criminal audit. There were going to be a lot of unhappy restaurateurs when everything became clear.

  Viola was in some trouble, too, but we knew she hadn’t been aware that her involvement was illegal. Aldous was going to do what he could to help her get a light punishment. We’d invited him to dinner, but he’d declined, saying he was busy with Viola’s case.

  But Mom was free, and she and Dad were planning on sticking around awhile—just to make sure their daughters stayed out of trouble.

  All was well.

  Well, until my dad, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered in my ear.

  “Darlin’. You know I love you and your sister more than anything, right?”

  “Of course, Dad.”

  “Then forgive me for intruding.”

  “Huh?”

  “You need to decide.”

  “Decide what?”

  “Which fella you love—or love more. You need to talk to them and tell them both. It’s only fair.”

  Of course, my dad had seen me kissing Sam. He’s the one who told Allison.

  “Oh.”

  Dad winked and turned to talk to Tom.

  I looked around the table. Ian was next to me and was just pleased that my mom was free and I hadn’t gotten too hurt beyond a little scrape this time. I still hadn’t told him about the kiss yet. He was looking at Betsy as she once again shared the story of our adventure in my barn. She continued to make me sound like some hero. Hobbit was the hero, but some people didn’t understand just how much animals knew and could do. I did, and that was all that mattered.

  Sam sat on Betsy’s other side. True to his word, he acted as though nothing had happened between us. He was a good guy. Allison sat next to him. She caught me surveying the table and fixed me with a strong glance and a nod. Our twin communication was at work. She was silently repeating what Dad had just said. Mom was next to her, and though she hadn’t said a word about the kiss, I suspected she knew, too.

  They were right, and it was all I could do not to jump up on the chair and announce my feelings, tell everyone what I’d been thinking, because I had been thinking. I’d been going over everything in my head and in my heart. I wanted to explain that I wasn’t good at making such decisions, but I was finally as certain as I could ever be about this one.

  It wouldn’t have been fair to those involved, though.

  It’d have to wait until I could handle it in private in the next day or two. I was going to risk a lot of things, perhaps even losing them both. It was a chance I had to take. It was only fair.

  I hoped I’d do the right thing. I hoped my two marriages had taught me something, but more than anything I hoped everyone would end up in a happier place and where they were supposed to be.

  My hippie parents and their attitudes might finally be rubbing off on me.

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  Recipes

  Allison’s Jailbreak Cookies

  1¼ cups butter, softened

  2 cups sugar

  2 eggs

  2 teaspoons vanilla

  2 cups flour

  ¾ cup cocoa

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 cups white (or semisweet) chocolate chips

  1 cup chopped dried apricots

  1 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

  Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.

  In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt; blend into butter mixture. Stir in chocolate chips, apricots, and nuts. Usinga ¼ cup measuring cup, drop dough onto cookie sheet. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until set. Cool slightly and remove from cookie sheet.

  Makes 2½ to 3 dozen cookies.

  Allison makes these for all special occasions, including jailbreaks!

  Manny’s Chicago-Style Deep-Dish Pizza

  PIZZA DOUGH

  16 ounces water

  ⅛ ounce yeast

  ½ cup salt

  2 pounds bread flour

  ¼ cup olive oil

  TOPPINGS

  2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

  2 cups tomato sauce, homemade or jarred

  ½ cup sliced mushrooms

  ½ cup shredded spinach

  ½ cup grated Romano cheese

  ½ cup sliced pepperoni

  ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

  In the bowl of an upright mixer, combine the water and the yeast and allow the yeast to dissolve. Add the remaining dough ingredients and mix using a dough hook on low speed. Once a ball forms, mix on medium speed for 1 to 2 minutes until the dough becomes elastic and smooth. Remove the dough from the mixer and place in a bowl coated with olive oil. Allow the dough to rest for 4 hours. Once the dough is rested, place on a flat surface and dust with some flour.

  Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. In a deep baking dish or a deep-dish pizza pan (approximately 12 to 14 inches in diameter), use your fingers to spread the dough over the bottom of the pan, and then up the sides of the pan approximately ½ inch.

  Begin layering the topping ingredients. Start with the mozzarella cheese, add tomato sauce, and then add the rest of the toppings. Place in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes until golden and crispy.

  Serve pizza straight from the oven to the table.

  Miriam’s Stuffed Sweet Onion
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  3 quarts water

  4 medium sweet onions, peeled

  Nonstick cooking spray

  1 tablespoon chopped green onion

  1½ teaspoons minced fresh parsley

  6 teaspoons butter, divided

  ½ cup chopped fully cooked lean ham (sometimes

  Miriam substitutes cooked bacon)

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  ¼ teaspoon pepper

  ¼ teaspoon celery seed

  ⅛ teaspoon garlic powder

  ½ cup soft bread crumbs, divided

  In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil. Add onions; cover and boil for 9 to 11 minutes or until tender. Drain; cool for 5 minutes. Cut a thin slice off the top of each onion; carefully hollow out the center, leaving a ½-inch shell. Chop removed onion.

  In a nonstick skillet coated with nonstick cooking spray, cook the chopped onion, green onion, and parsley in 4 teaspoons butter for 3 minutes. Add the ham, salt, pepper, celery seed, and garlic powder; cook until onions are tender and ham is lightly browned. Stir in ¼ cup bread crumbs; heat through. Stuff the mixture into each of the onion shells.

  Melt remaining butter; toss with remaining bread crumbs. Sprinkle over stuffing. Broil 6 inches from the heat for 3 to 4 minutes or until crumbs are lightly browned and onions are heated through.

  Serves 4.

  Bo’s Snickerdoodles

  1 cup butter

  1½ cups sugar

  2 large eggs

  2¾ cups flour

  2 teaspoons cream of tartar

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  3 tablespoons sugar

  3 teaspoons cinnamon

  Chilled cookie sheet

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

  In a large bowl, thoroughly mix butter, 1½ cups sugar, and eggs.

  In a medium bowl, combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Blend dry ingredients into butter mixture. Chill dough in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, blend 3 tablespoons sugar and 3 teaspoons cinnamon.