“I heard about the murder. You involved in this one, too?” she asked.
“Sort of. Wayne Laitinen was a friend of mine. His daughter asked me to help, but I haven’t been much use so far.” She shook her head, then nibbled on the donut.
“Who’s involved?” Sim asked.
“Well, according to Pete, Wayne’s wife could be a suspect. She wasn’t that happy with him, but isn’t that why they made divorce?”
Sim snorted as she lugged the new battery to the truck. “Yeah. If every unhappy wife knocked off the husband, there wouldn’t be many men left in the world.”
“And then this rich woman who lives next door apparently wanted to buy part of the farm for her daughter’s horse. But—”
“You talking Judith Patterson?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“She brings her Mercedes here for service. She’s okay. A little snooty, but she doesn’t give me trouble. Not like Irene did.” She raised the pierced eyebrow. Sim had been a suspect in a murder case in the fall after a public argument between her and the victim.
“I’m glad to hear that.” Cam sipped the coffee.
“They think Judith might have killed this Wayne guy to get his land?”
“I don’t know. There’s a connection between her vaping habit and the murder, apparently.” Cam couldn’t remember if the murder weapon had been made public.
“Funny, those e-cigs. I think people look ridiculous doing that.”
“Agree. Well, if you happen to hear Judith talking about the farm or anything, will you let me know?”
“Of course.” Sim straightened from the engine compartment and wiped her hands again. “Climb in and start ’er up. Should be all set.”
Cam drove directly from Sim’s to Seabrook. An hour after she got home, she climbed down from the ladder at the corner of the barn, her two new electronic acquisitions installed. The motion detector light was easy, since she’d done one in the past. She’d decided for now to plug it into a receptacle inside the barn, threading an extension cord through a hole she drilled in the wall, until she could get an electrician to come out. While she was at the electronics store, she’d bought a remote camera, too. With all that had been going on, it seemed only prudent. The camera proved even easier to install, since it operated by a wireless signal, and could use the same power source as the light. She set down the drill, held out her phone, and activated the camera according to the instructions in the slim manual, then brought up the viewing app.
Sure enough, there she was, seen from above, gazing at her phone in her hand. If anybody tried to come near her barn again, they’d be both spotlighted and filmed. And if for some reason the light didn’t come on, the camera also included night-vision capability up to twenty-five feet.
She had no idea who last night’s intruder had been. But if they came back, she’d at least nab them on camera.
She shook her head. It was time to get to work around here. The midmorning sun shone with all the fervor of nearing the equinox, and she’d never gotten to the blueberry pruning. If she didn’t do it while the bushes were still dormant, she’d risk clipping out too much or damaging the buds. And with this sunshine, they weren’t going to be dormant much longer.
After she put away the drill and screws, she grabbed the red-handled hand pruners off their hook on her tool wall, locked the barn, and headed out to the row of blueberries along the left side of the property. Albert had planted twenty bushes a couple of decades earlier, a mix of mid- and high-bush varieties, and they were in full maturity now. When the berries ripened in July, the sweet dark orbs were easy to pick, didn’t have pests or diseases to speak of, and customers loved them for their flavor and their health properties alike. The bushes, most not much taller than Cam, were healthy and only needed dead branches pruned out. Albert had told her to watch for when the pine trees shed their needles, gather them up, and use them to mulch the acidic-loving blueberries. That was about all the care they needed. Well, plus throwing nets over them in the summer so she didn’t lose the crop to birds.
She studied the first bush and began to clip. The theory was to remove any dead wood or any branch that rubbed on another, which could open a wound and let disease get in, and then to keep the center of the plant open, allowing in light and air. Just like with the apple tree, except she didn’t need to stand on a ladder to manage these. She inhaled. The air finally smelled like things growing instead of things freezing. As Cam wrestled with a particularly thick branch in the middle of one bush, the pruners slipped and turned sideways, then fell to the ground, nearly slicing her thumb on the way down. She swore. This was a branch for loppers, not hand pruners. She trudged back to the barn to get them, but stopped when her phone rang in her pocket. She checked the display and answered, then started walking again.
“Ruth, what’s up?”
“We have results for that bone you found,” Ruth said.
“Oh?”
“It was a human bone. Likely from a female.”
Cam stopped in her tracks. A human bone. A female. A bracelet. An accident. She shot her gaze to the compost bins a few yards away, the ground around them still trampled by the teams who had been there only a few days earlier.
“Cam, are you there?”
“Sorry. Yes. What happens next?”
“We follow up about that bracelet. Did you ever ask Albert about it?” Ruth asked.
“He didn’t think he’d ever seen it, but he couldn’t say for sure that it had never been on the farm.”
“And we try to identify the remains,” Ruth said.
“Um . . .”
“Um?”
“I think you should talk to Pete. We’ve, I mean, he’s learned of an accident from a long time ago that wasn’t reported. That bone might be from an Irish girl named Fionnoula Leary.”
“How do you know that? And how did it get onto your farm?”
Cam didn’t know how deeply to go into it with Ruth, especially on the phone. Ruth must have forgotten what Cam had told her about the load of lobster shells. She gazed up at a red-tailed hawk drawing big loops in the cerulean sky. “Ask Pete. And thanks for letting me know.”
Stepping back a couple of yards from the blueberries, Cam stretched her arms to the near midday sky as she surveyed the row. It had taken a couple of hours, but the pruning was finished, for this year, anyway. The garden cart sat full of pruned-out dead and broken wood, and the bushes looked clean and open. As she’d worked, she’d thought about the bone and the bracelet. They had to have come in with the lobster shells, which meant they’d been in or near the ocean all this time. With any luck, Pete would have extracted the details of the accident from either Catriona or Paul by now. How sad that none of the three teenage survivors had felt they needed to inform the family or the authorities about what happened. She couldn’t imagine having that on her conscience for her entire adult life, and they had been living with exactly that weight. But then, what did they say about the teen brain? It wasn’t fully developed in the area that could predict consequences.
She hefted the cart and wheeled it back to her brush pile, then upended it, raking the last bits of branch out with her hands along with a few fat earthworms that had hitched a ride. A nuthatch pecked head down at the bark of a nearby tree, and a newly hatched moth floated over the pile. The most pressing question was if that long-ago event was connected to Wayne’s murder. Paul had said Wayne was ready to go public about the accident. Would Paul have killed him to prevent that exposure?
Cam walked the cart back to the barn, stopping to pick up the pruning tools on the way. She set the cart down at the chicken coop, which in this sunshine was smelling pretty ripe. All the girls were out, digging in the dirt, pecking at the dried feed she’d scattered for them, enjoying the near-spring warmth as much as Cam was. She’d planned all along to move the coop around the farm, since her volunteers had built it on a wheeled trailer bed and the fence was portable, too. She’d make time in the next couple of
days to hitch the system to the truck and set it out in one of the fallow fields, so the hens could dig up weeds and fertilize the soil at the same time. Maybe she ought to rig a chicken cam, too. She’d seen a site like that on the Internet when she worked in a cubicle and it had seemed charming and entertaining to watch chickens poke around a yard. Her use of a camera now would be much more practical.
As she watched the chickens, Cam pictured Katie at the pizza house last night. Something was clearly still bothering her. She could ask Alexandra if she knew what was up. She pictured Katie sitting next to Tam and not acting particularly friendly toward this dude who was ostensibly her friend, and then leaving with him, after all. There was something odd about Tam. He was too smiley. Too polite. Too sincere. So sincere it didn’t quite ring true. Even his posture was too good to be true, as was showing up out of the blue to volunteer.
She lifted the cart’s handles again to wheel it into the barn and put the tools away. When it balked, she stopped and checked the wheels. Something black was tangled in the spokes of the left wheel and had gotten onto the axle. She squatted to examine the thing, which was a piece of fabric. She upended the cart to unweave it, tugging and turning the wheels. After it was loose she stood and shook it out. It was a scarf. A black fleece scarf.
Cam brought her hand to her mouth. Tam. He had been wearing a black scarf when he came to volunteer. A scarf very much like this one. He had been interested in her barn. He wasn’t wearing the scarf at the House of Pizza. Of course, there could be plenty of young men wearing black scarves out there. Maybe he’d simply lost it. But with his connection to Katie, and maybe to the animal rights folks, she had to report this to the police. It was their job to check it out.
She drew out her phone, pressed the number for the Westbury station, and asked for either of the officers who had come to check out the vandalism. When the female came on the line, Cam told her about finding the scarf, about seeing Tam wearing it or one like it on Wednesday and then not last evening.
“I don’t know if it’s his, but it looks like the same one,” Cam said. “His full name is Tamlin Haskell.”
“How do you spell Tamlin?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it written. That’s how he pronounced it.”
“Do you have an address for him?”
“No. But I think he’s a student at Northern Essex Community College. He’s a friend of Katie Magnusson’s, you know—”
“The woman who was at the Laitinen vandalism. Yes. Thank you, we’ll look into this. Please secure the scarf in a paper bag and touch it as little as possible. We’ll send someone out to pick it up.”
Cam thanked her and disconnected. She stared at the phone for a moment. Should she also let Pete know? First she had to secure the scarf. She held it by one corner and walked into the barn to where she kept a supply of paper bags for her customers. She’d just slid it in and folded over the top when she heard a car crunching the gravel in her driveway. She wasn’t expecting anyone, but her customers knew they were always welcome to drop by.
Dasha began to bark from where she’d left him tied to a long line near the big old maple in the backyard. Cam walked out of the barn and stopped. Speak of the devil.
Tam Haskell stood next to a boxy, beat-up Volvo sedan. He held up both hands to fend off Dasha. The dog strained at the rope, which didn’t quite reach to where Tam stood.
“Dasha,” Cam called. “Stop barking, now.” She walked to the dog and pulled him back a few feet. Dasha quieted but didn’t take his eyes off Tam.
“Hey, Tam,” Cam said. “You here to volunteer again?”
Staring at Dasha with narrowed eyes and a grim set to his mouth, Tam shook his head with a quick move. “Don’t have time today.”
“That’s good, because I’m almost caught up on chores.” Where had his previous good nature gone? “So what’s up?”
“I left my scarf here the other day when I was working. Wondered if you’d found it.” He glanced at her, then back at the dog.
Aha. “What does it look like?”
“Black. Fleece.”
“No, I haven’t seen it. Did you leave it by the hens?”
“I guess so.” He kept his gaze on Dasha. “You know, it’s bad for dogs to tie them up.”
“Thanks.” Cam smiled, keeping her tone light. “He’s not mine. I simply do what his owner asks me to do.”
“His owner. Right. See you, then.” He looked over at the barn. “I see you have a new lock. Good idea. You never know who’s out there.”
“That’s for sure. Did you hear that vandals attacked my farm? My little defenseless chicks were put out in the cold. They’re only a week old.” She watched him.
He lifted a shoulder and let it drop.
“And a fox came in and ate several of them. The group seems to think that’s giving animals their rights. Their right to die, I guess.”
Tam didn’t respond as he turned away. Before he climbed into the car and started it, Cam memorized the license plate number. The engine made a knocking sound as he backed onto the street. So that’s who her prowler had been. She turned her head toward the barn. She couldn’t even see the flat lock from here.
“Good dog, Dasha.” She patted his head. He’d definitely recognized Tam from the night before. “Good boy.” She pulled out her phone and dialed the Westbury Police Department once again.
Chapter 23
Cam took the last bite of her tuna sandwich and swiped an errant piece of celery off the plate. Tam must have suspected he dropped his scarf during the vandalism and had come back last night to what he thought would be an unlocked barn. Or maybe he was hoping to continue letting her chicks out. Good thing for good locks.
She bit off an inch of a deliciously sour and crunchy dill pickle and chewed, glancing idly at the wall calendar titled A Year in Tuscany. This month’s photograph featured rolling hills covered in lines of grapevines with a sun-splashed sprawling farmhouse and winery nestled in the middle. Definitely not New England. But the calendar also pointed out that today was Friday, the day Pete had to produce results.
She was about to call him when someone knocked on the back door. Cam pulled the curtain aside on the window to see Megan standing there with a cloth bag in her hand. Cam opened the door. Megan’s thigh-length jacket was misbuttoned and strands of her fine dark-blond hair had escaped from the clip that pulled it back off her face.
“Megan, come in.”
“I can’t, really. I’m on my lunch break from school.” Megan extended the bag. “But I brought back your dish. Thank you for the lasagna.”
“I was glad I could do something.” Cam drew out the rectangular glass pan, setting it on the table behind her, and handed the bag back. “Are you sure you won’t come in for a minute?”
Megan shook her head and stepped down one stair. “Have you gotten any closer, Cam? To finding out who killed my father?” Her eyes pleaded.
Cam cleared her throat. “I’m afraid not. I’ve been trying to follow up on a couple of things, but—”
“Like what?” Megan’s eyebrows lifted in hope.
“Oh, it’s something that happened a long, long time ago. With your dad and a couple of his friends when they were in high school.”
“In high school?” Megan frowned.
“Yes. But I don’t think it has anything to do with his death. I’m sorry.”
Megan’s shoulders sagged. She turned and made her way down the rest of the steps and turned to face Cam. “The detective won’t tell me a thing. My mom’s shut me out emotionally, and my brother already went back to Florida to rejoin his family on their vacation. I feel completely alone.” She climbed in her car, shutting the door with barely a click.
“I’m sorry,” Cam said softly, watching her drive away. A cloud gusted over the sun, casting somber shadows that matched Megan’s mood. Cam blew out a breath and shut the door.
She picked up her phone and pressed Pete’s number, tapping her foot as she waited for him
to answer.
“Hey,” she said, after he picked up on the tenth ring. “Just checking in. Got a minute?”
“Not really. I’ll call you back in a little while.” He disconnected.
“Okay, then,” she said to the phone. She set it down and cleared her lunch plate, then stood uncertain in the kitchen. There must be other work she should be doing outdoors, but she thought she was pretty caught up. Poor Megan, feeling bereft and abandoned. And Cam no help to her what whatsoever.
Cam wandered over to her computer and sat. In her former life as a software engineer, puzzling out problems was so much more straightforward. If a piece of a program didn’t work, she could always figure out the reason by testing smaller and smaller parts until she isolated the problem. But figuring out her fellow humans’ motivations, secrets, feelings—that was another realm of problem solving entirely, one for which she possessed few talents.
Her fingers poised above the keyboard, she tried to think of an avenue she could follow that might further the case. She pictured Judith’s whispered message to Greta at the wake. Remembered the exchange between Greta and Judith at Town Meeting. Heard again Wayne and Greta’s argument about selling the land.
And then there was the vaping connecting Judith to the means of death. What if she could dig up information about Judith? She ran a consulting business; it couldn’t be that hard to delve further into her life, even though Cam hadn’t been able to find much the first time she looked. She searched for Judith’s name and stared at the top result on the screen: “Judith Patterson in custody in the Laitinen murder case.”
When had that happened? It must have been only this morning. No wonder Pete didn’t have time to talk. Judith had said she’d been called in for questioning earlier in the week. But “in custody” had a much more serious ring to it, although Cam thought it stopped short of arrest.
She clicked the link and read the story, in which Pete was quoted as saying evidence had come to light that linked Ms. Patterson to the crime, although the investigation continued. The article, only a few paragraphs long, didn’t describe the evidence or go into any other details.
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