Shallow Roots: An Iowa Girl Mystery (Iowa Girl Mysteries Book 1)

by Anomie Hatcher

  Maggie shook off the memory. Fennel was dead. She would have to tell her parents. They would want to attend the funeral.

  “Loki?” she asked. “Did Fennel have any family? I mean, besides all of you?”

  “Yes. Her mom.” Loki was nearly out of tears. “Namasté called her. She wasn’t home, probably working. They weren’t very close.”

  “Still. She’ll want to know.”

  “What? That her freak of a daughter died and left her freak friends in anguish? Yeah, I’m sure she’ll want to know. Good riddance, right?”

  “Loki!”

  “Sorry.” Incredibly, he was working up to a yowl again. “It’s just that we’re her family, Mack. You choose your real family. I mean—look at you and me, right?”

  Maggie considered what Loki was saying. They had each been foster children. She didn’t know the full extent of Loki’s story, just that he had never gotten adopted. Maggie had been a foundling and had only spent a couple of weeks in foster care. It wasn’t as though she had chosen the MacGilloways, but she was grateful they had chosen her. She might never have been adopted at all, like Loki, or have gone into a cruel, abusive situation. Instead, she ended up with loving parents who raised her like their own, who had nurtured and homeschooled her and who prayed for her every day.

  In fact, all of Maggie’s siblings were adopted. Joe and Mary were unable to conceive, due to an athletic injury in Joe’s childhood. They married young and both knew they wanted a large family. Nine children later, the MacGilloway clan resembled an ad for multiculturalism, with children of widely varied ethnic backgrounds. Although none of them looked particularly Irish-American, Maggie and her siblings all were given Celtic-origin names and they all attended the annual St. Paddy’s Day parade.

  Maggie was the first to be adopted. Mary liked to tell the story of how baby Maggie was found by a paperboy in the spring of 1970. She had been wrapped in a blanket and placed in the bushes of a well-to-do family on the south side of Des Moines. (“Left by the angels,” Joe would always comment at this point in the story. “Left by aliens,” her brother Seamus would whisper simultaneously behind a cupped hand.”) The adoption agency told Joe and Mary that Maggie was born sometime near the end of April or the beginning of May, so her parents decided her birthday would be April 29. As far as appearances went, she looked more Swedish than Irish, but nothing factual was known of Maggie’s origins. She could’ve been from anywhere—“the natural daughter of somebody” like Jane Austen’s Harriet Smith. Maggie’s biological parents were never found. The modus operandi suggested teen pregnancy. According to the agency, scared young mothers often abandoned their newborns where they would be easily found by a family of means.

  So what did Loki mean when he said, “look at you and me?” He was pushing the point about family a bit. The Originals had come together as adults. They worked together, lived together, planned together, but there were no parents or children in the group. Original Farm had existed for fifteen years, but some of the Originals had been housemates for much longer. How much longer, Maggie did not know. She guessed that the Originals ranged in age from thirty-five to fifty, with Loki being the youngest. Or maybe his boundless energy just made him seem younger than the others. She was unsure at which point a convenient situation had turned into an intentional community for any of them. Honestly, she didn’t even know their real names.

  “Loki? Let me call Ben and get back to you, okay?” Maggie scratched at a spot of dried resin on the lab counter with her thumbnail.

  “Do you need permission to leave? Does he own you, Mack?”

  “Loki, that’s not fair. Talk about choosing—Ben and I—we chose one another, didn’t we? He’s my family, too. I can’t just leave him in the lurch. He’s expecting me.”

  Loki was silent, save a few tearful shudders.

  “Loki?”

  “Yeah, call the old man. I’ll call you when there’s a funeral.” Loki hung up.

  Maggie frowned, feeling hurt. What did Loki think she was going to do? Drop everything and move back in? Act like she and Ben weren’t a couple? It was unreasonable to expect her to take off without at least talking to Ben. But then, Loki was not a reasonable person—wonderful in bed, loyal to the core, a one-act, one-man play that didn’t end, but never, ever reasonable.

  Maggie shrugged out of her lab coat and dialed Ben’s cell.

  Chapter 3

  Back in the summer of 1991, a group of twelve people sat around the dining room table in the stone house at Original Farm. Tor was giving a long-winded orientation for Maggie and the other seasonal hired hands. Unlike the other boarders, Maggie had been through Tor’s lecture twice before and knew it well. Nevertheless, everyone, including the Originals themselves, attended the first meeting of the summer. They sat with varying degrees of attentiveness on their faces—the five rookies, Maggie (the lone veteran boarder), and the six who lived at Original Farm year round.

  Like most procedures in this household, the first meeting of the season would not be abandoned for a more streamlined practice. Group meetings were a doted-upon ritual here. Namasté’s fondest words on the subject were, “It’s all about the how, not the what.”

  Any minute Tor will mention the importance of a good pair of boots, Maggie thought. She leaned back in her chair and studied the footwear of the new recruits. The two girls were wearing flip-flops.

  Tor scratched the bridge of his beak-like nose with his middle finger. “I cannot stress how much you need to protect your feet with a decent pair of work boots,” he said.

  Maggie drew her lips inward and clamped them down hard. Loki caught her in the act and winked. She had to look away to keep from laughing.

  Loki was seated between Sunflower and Fennel. He continually leaned his head on first one, then the other’s shoulder. Fennel either ignored him or chose to pat him on the head like she would a needy St. Bernard. Sunflower let him get away with it once, then firmly stomped on his bare toes the second time he tried.

  TomTom sat at the opposite head of the long table from Tor and appeared very much absorbed in the crochet work she was doing. Namasté stood behind TomTom, carefully braiding corn rows into TomTom’s shoulder-length, green hair. Each year Maggie returned to Original Farm, TomTom had a different hair color. She once told Maggie that she’d made it a goal to work her way through the rainbow before she turned forty. So far, she’s right on track, Maggie thought.

  Tor droned about logging work hours on the wall chart and labeling personal food in the refrigerator with masking tape and a permanent marker. His voice became background noise for Maggie’s mental reflections.

  This summer marked the time between undergraduate and graduate school for Maggie. She had soared through the first four years of college, eventually pacing her study partners to the point that she had disengaged from all but a few. Working alone didn’t bother her in the least. It was Maggie’s opinion that people who were not actively determined to learn had no business in the field of botany. The basics of plant life remained virtually static, so there was not much to do there but delve as deeply as one could, but applications in plant science continued to expand. If a person was serious about keeping up with new information and discoveries, they had to apply themselves. Maggie had no tolerance for slackers.

  Already, several ideas for research papers were stored on Maggie’s computer at her parents’ house. Her overworked advisor had given her a half-hearted thumbs up and suggested she keep a file of ideas. Maggie knew when she was being put off. It irritated her to wait on other people.

  She’d have brought the computer with her, but there was really no private space in which she could work. Plus, Maggie’s time at Original Farm would go by quickly. She would spend her waking hours toiling to the point of exhaustion. She didn’t mind the break from research or the hard physical labor. Original Farm was a more interesting place to live than at home with her family and she couldn’t afford an apartment. Being outdoors most of the day kept her healthy
and happy. She’d be ready to hit the books with a fervor when August rolled around.

  Tor let Fennel talk for a couple of minutes. Fennel explained that she, Sunflower and TomTom would be waking early to bake several mornings a week, so anyone who was a light sleeper should not bunk in the downstairs common space. Given the last two summers worth of experience, Maggie knew this would not be an issue by the second week. At least two of the six boarders would have left for good by then, leaving four lucky contestants to split the work between themselves. Four foldaway cots would fit in the upstairs living room without a problem. No one would have to endure the glare or the noise coming from the kitchen while they tried to sleep downstairs. Maggie was betting on the flip flop girls for deserters. One of them idly plucked a stray hair from her ear lobe. The other was actually filing her nails.

  The sandaled girls looked alike—skinny arms, bobbed blond hair and flawless makeup. They had come together, probably figuring this to be some kind of new adventure, a walk on the weird side so utterly apart from their youth in suburbia. The other three boarders were men: one a Serbian immigrant attending night school at a two-year business college, one a Bermuda shorts-clad thirty-four year old who had professed his love of extreme sports during introductions, and one a homeless man who, though grateful to have a place to spend the summer, continually dozed off during the meeting.

  Maggie’s back was to the living room, so she faced the kitchen for the duration of the meeting. Her eyes took in the familiar space as she listened to Fennel. It was an impressive kitchen in which to bake: a cast iron stove sat side-by-side with a modern range, along the outside wall. There was an industrial refrigerator and a separate deep freeze. The cupboards extended to the high ceiling and had no doors on them, so that chipped mugs, stacks of multi-colored plates, haphazardly piled cookware and dusty rows of home-canned tomatoes were exposed to view all at once. The tidiest shelves were those which held Fennel’s labeled plastic containers of gluten-free flours. The blue-lidded, rectangular boxes had neatly lettered stickers which advertised their contents of sorghum, tapioca, buckwheat, millet, brown rice, corn and quinoa flours.

  Fennel’s softer voice gave way to Tor’s more commanding tones. He moved onto the chore roster. Maggie knew the next step would be walking out to the fields and barn, where they would examine and learn the difference between the wet and dry compost piles. They had also begun a vermicompost box, on Maggie’s recommendation, just last summer. She wondered how the flip flop girls would react to plunging their hands into the moist, nitrogen-rich worm castings. Bored, Maggie let her eyes continue wandering.

  On the granite countertop sat a regular fixture of Original Farm. It was a cookie jar in the shape of a squat old woman with beady eyes. The lid of the jar was a basket of vegetables perched atop the woman’s head and around the base of the jar were the words “she was pithy and sharp, like an overripe radish.” Someone, Maggie was not sure who, had named the jar Auntie Diluvia. She assumed Auntie was an antique, perhaps a remnant of Tor’s childhood, one of the few items left from when Original Farm was his family home. Maggie was aware (though she was the only boarder privy to this knowledge) that if one lifted the ceramic basket from Auntie Diluvia’s head they would find a palm-sized rubber spider sitting on a pile of ready cash. “Mad money,” Maggie’s Aunt Kate would’ve called it. The cash was available for use by all six housemates for odd expenses, replenished as miscellaneous monies came in, and seldom counted.

  Tor got up and stretched. Everyone else followed suit. Namasté left off braiding TomTom’s hair for the time being. The two of them linked arms like school girls and headed out the kitchen door after Tor, Fennel and Sunflower.

  Loki held back, letting the beginners file out. He and Maggie brought up the rear. He eyed the two blonde girls lasciviously, making sure Maggie saw what he was doing.

  “Mmmm… what I wouldn’t give for a sandwich right now,” he whispered.

  Maggie rolled her eyes.

  “Jealous?” he asked, brushing Maggie’s elbow with the tips of his fingers.

  “No, I’m not,” she said, and meant it.

  “C’mon, Mack. My offer still stands. I’d a million times rather have you than a couple of stick figures. Put together, those chicas don’t make one of you.”

  “Is that a reference to quality or quantity?”

  “Quality, Mack, what else?” Loki missed or ignored the sarcasm. “You are one hundred percent Real Thing—the good stuff.”

  “I’m not interested in being wooed, Loki. I’m here to work.”

  “I’ll put you to work, Baby.”

  Maggie stopped, letting the rest of the group walk ahead. “Knock it off!”

  “What’s with you?” he asked. “I’m just playing around.”

  “Bullshit, Loki! You aren’t just kidding. You really think we should sleep together and you don’t care that it would be awkward between us later. I like spending my summers here. We have fun, don’t we? We get work done. We’re friends. Why can’t that be enough?”

  Loki regarded her for a moment. “You’ve been burned—is that it? Had a bad relationship, had your poor little heart broken. Am I right?”

  “No. I never date.”

  “Well, I’m not asking you out for pizza and a movie.”

  “You want to play games with my head. I’ve seen you do it more than once. You want to mess with me, hoping I’ll fall apart when you don’t want me anymore. I’m not into games.”

  “No, silly. I like sex with beautiful people. You’re tasty, girl.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “What? You are. I’m not the first person to notice.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Maggie hissed, barely over a whisper. “That I’ve never had any sort of relationship with a man. My parents were very protective and later I just got—I don’t know—absorbed. Sex has never been a priority.”

  “Let me get this straight: you’re telling me that you’re twenty-one years old and you’re a virgin?”

  “Yes. So what?”

  “Be still my heart,” Loki said, grabbing his chest as though experiencing spasms of pain.

  “Oh my God. What’s the big deal?”

  Loki pretended at a struggle to regain his composure. “I feel like a forty-niner who just tripped over a gold nugget the size of a baseball.”

  “What a stupid thing to say.”

  “Okay—a basketball.”

  Tor and the rest of the group were out of sight by now. Maggie marched away from Loki to rejoin them.

  “Wait! Maggie! What kind of a scientist are you, anyway?”

  She stopped, turned back toward Loki and crossed her arms.

  “What?”

  “How can you totally avoid something you’ve never tried? What about trials and experimentations and all that?”

  She grinned, despite herself. “You are such an idiot.”

  “You could take notes, draw diagrams. It would be a learning experience.”

  “We need to catch up. I’m sure I can hear Tor calling my name.”

  “Just think about it. You know I’m right. You can’t resist a challenge.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m not after your heart, Mack. Just your body. We’ll always be friends, no matter what.”

  Somewhere between the back steps and the barn, Maggie decided Loki was probably right—annoying and juvenile, but right. There was no reason to put it off any longer. All of her undergrad peers had had sex by the time they were out of high school. She knew this because none of them could keep quiet about their nocturnal exploits. It was listening to the never-ending emotional dramas of her college roommates that had convinced Maggie to steer clear of the whole business. Up to this point, she had never considered sex worth the trouble.

  Sex could be a rite of passage or, at the very least, a potentially interesting experience. Loki was right about one thing: Maggie couldn’t resist a
challenge. She waited till lights out to tell him so.

  Two years later, in 1993, Maggie had graduated from Iowa State University with a Master of Science in botany. She specialized in mycology, having admired the reproductive efficiency and variety of fungi from an early age. Her summers of boarding at Original Farm were over, though she occasionally visited the Originals, and spoke with Loki once every couple of weeks on the phone.

  When it came time to seek employment, Maggie felt the rush of excitement that comes with every new step in life. The prospect of earning a living in the field that she loved was intoxicating. One of her first steps was to attend a job fair specifically geared toward recent grads who wanted to work in the sciences.

  The job fair was held at the convention center in downtown Des Moines. Several agri-business corporations had stands, but Maggie stayed away from these. The work there for a botanist would most likely consist of increasing crop yields or creating GMOs. Neither of those activities interested her. She had been hoping, perhaps a bit naïvely, that she would find employment with a company that would station her in some exotic locale.

  Two young men stood at the state agricultural department booth. One of them, an Asian-American man with deep pock marks on his cheeks, wearing a black and gold striped shirt, was actively waving her over. Maggie tried to pretend as though she hadn’t seen him. The man next to Striped Shirt had freckles and a sweet smile. Though Freckles didn’t wave, something about him made her stop.

  “Hi,” Freckles said. “My name is Ben.”

  “Yes. I read your name tag,” she said. His eyes had a sparkle that left her feeling dazed.

  “I’m Mark,” said Striped Shirt, waving his hand between the two of them. “I’d like to talk with you about state employment benefits, if you have a minute.”