Mulch Ado about Murder

by Edith Maxwell

  “Yes.”

  He folded his hands and stared at them. “God, now I’m going to have to deal with Rudin.”

  “Who’s Rudin?” Cam asked.

  “The just recently ex-husband, or maybe it’s about-to-be-ex. I’m not sure if the divorce is final.” He set his mouth in a grim line. “I never liked him. He’s one of those men who wants to control everything, especially his wife. At least he paid her what he owed her. I mean, I think he was finished paying.”

  “The divorce settlement?”

  Bobby nodded. “She didn’t want to keep their house in Miami, so he bought her out. That’s how she could afford to buy the property on Main Street, that little house and the land.”

  “That’s right. A small house sits behind the greenhouse. Almost a cottage. Nicole was living there?”

  “Yes. She owned the cottage, but she had to take out a loan to build the greenhouse. She’d come up with a good business model. She was going to make it work.”

  “Nicole seemed very devoted to the enterprise. Organized, hardworking.”

  “She was starting over,” Bobby said. “Getting a fresh beginning in her life.”

  “Did she have any children?” Cam asked.

  “No, and she was sad about that. But it’s just as well she didn’t have any with him.” Bobby pronounced the pronoun like it was an obscenity. He stood. “I’d better go. Thanks for telling me, Cam. You’re a good friend. I’d rather hear news like that from you than from the TV, or from whoever would have told me.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.”

  He brought a fist to his mouth and blinked away a tear. “I need to call my aunt. The police probably already told her, right? She’s next of kin, at least if the divorce is final.”

  “Yes, they probably have, if they could reach her.”

  “She must be devastated. They were so close, her and Nickie.”

  Cam stood, too, and held out her arms for a wordless hug. After they said good-bye, Bobby walked toward his truck as if he were dragging a twenty-pound sledgehammer in each hand.

  Chapter 6

  Death or no death, Cam still had a farm to run. She stood in the barn at eight the next morning. It was another warm day with not a rain cloud in sight, and her volunteers would be showing up shortly. She’d been holding weekly volunteer days for almost a year now. It was a big help to have dedicated customers arrive ready and willing to weed, turn compost, harvest, and generally lend hands and muscles. All of them were members of her community-supported agriculture program, her CSA. They prepaid to pick up a share of fresh organic produce every week all summer and into the fall. Cam really needed to hire at least a part-time worker for the busy months this year—but she’d been too busy to advertise and interview for one. So far the volunteers filled the labor gap. Even though she usually held the volunteer day on Wednesday, none of them had minded her switching it to Friday this week because of her parents’ visit.

  Cam had had trouble falling asleep last night. She’d chatted with her parents for a half hour after Bobby had left, sipping a little glass of Scotch, avoiding talk of death. But once she slid into bed upstairs, it was Nicole’s death that filled her mind. Bobby’s reaction. Pete’s suspicions. The sight of Nicole’s dead body splayed over the slurry vat. Even the rosary in her hand. Cam hadn’t fallen asleep until after midnight. Now she yawned wide, then drained the last drop from her mug of French roast coffee.

  Bobby had spent last summer rebuilding Cam’s barn after the fire. Last fall, when things were getting rocky with her former beau, the volatile chef Jake, the very attractive Bobby had flirted with her. But her relationship with Pete had picked up once she’d told Jake she couldn’t handle his jealousy or his tempers, and now Cam and Bobby had settled into a firm friendship. She was glad of it. She was happy with Pete—or would be again once this current mess was solved—and who couldn’t use a friendship with a handsome carpenter?

  Felicity Slavin popped in through the open barn door wearing a purple T-shirt and green work pants tucked into turquoise rubber boots. She hurried to Cam. “How are you holding up? It must have been just awful to find poor Nicole dead.”

  “Not much fun, for sure. How did your statement go?”

  She lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “I told them I didn’t know Nicole, hadn’t met her. I just didn’t want chemicals going into food. Any food, anywhere. And organic should mean food grown in soil, not in solution.”

  “Do you know for sure what she was feeding the plants?”

  “It doesn’t really matter. NOSB recommended hydroponics not be certified. It dilutes the standards, Cam!”

  This was funny. Cam was the certified organic farmer, but her customer was throwing around acronyms like a pro. The National Organic Standards Board was trying to uphold the philosophy of organic, but the National Organic Program had allowed hydroponics to be certified organic. An unfortunate tension existed between the standards board—which wanted to uphold the entire relationship of water, soil, microorganisms, the works—and the certifying program, which dealt with working farms big and small as well as lobbyists from deep-pocketed farmers.

  “NOP shouldn’t have certified hydroponics. They should have listened to the board.” Felicity frowned and crossed her arms.

  “Since when did you become an expert on NOP? I thought you were more concerned about eating local food, being part of the Locavore Club and all.”

  “It’s all tied in together, Cam. You know that.”

  Cam mentally rolled her eyes. She was committed to growing organically—it just made sense. But she didn’t always eat local and organic herself and didn’t go overboard about it.

  “Did you tell the police about all the standards stuff? I mean, how it related to Nicole’s business?” Cam asked.

  “I certainly did.”

  Cam glanced up to see a sparrow fly into the barn and light on a rafter. She returned her gaze to Felicity. “I saw a dark-haired man in the greenhouse parking lot yesterday afternoon. Did you see him? He looked kind of pale. I don’t know who he is.”

  Felicity cocked her head. “I can’t say that I did. But you know the lot is shared with the Huntington Insurance Agency next door.”

  “That’s right. He probably had business with them.” Instead of business killing Nicole. Cam had never had a particularly vivid imagination, but it seemed to be going haywire lately, putting ideas like that into her brain.

  A bicycle bell trilled outside, and Alexandra Magnusson strode in a moment later. “Am I late for a meeting?” she asked, lifting her helmet off her flaxen hair, worn as usual in two long braids.

  Cam laughed. “No, but thanks for coming. How’s your new job?”

  “It’s great. The environmental group loves my web design work. They want to bring me on full time, but I told them not unless I can have my farm mornings off. I would miss volunteering here too much.”

  Smiling, Cam thanked her lucky stars. These two women, along with Lucinda DaSilva, had become much more than customers over the last year. They were good friends, and her lifeboat. She knew they had her back as well as one another’s.

  “Are you distributing summer shares this Saturday?” Alexandra asked. “I’ve lost track of the start date.”

  “No, not until June fourth.” Cam had fifty subscribers signed up for her CSA this year, and the beginning of the season was always iffy. She hoped she’d have enough produce to satisfy everyone. At least she had plenty of greens in the field. “You both can go out and cut greens for yourselves, if you want. Take some asparagus, too.” The delectable shoots were popping up like crazy. One could almost watch them grow.

  “Thanks,” Felicity said.

  Alexandra’s expression grew somber. “You found that greenhouse lady yesterday.”

  “I did,” Cam said. “We were just talking about that.”

  “She was actually growing vegetables? Or planning to?” Alexandra tilted her head. “When I hear hydroponics, I always think of pot
farms.” She shot a quick glance to Felicity. “No offense or anything.”

  “No offense taken.” Felicity twisted her mouth. “That was Wes’s doing, not mine.” She brightened her expression with visible effort. Felicity’s husband Wes was currently serving time for a serious error in judgment.

  The petite woman was unfailingly cheerful and optimistic, Cam thought. It had to be hard for her to have her ex-hippie pot-smoking husband in prison.

  Cam glanced at the door of the barn when she heard a knock. A smiling woman about Felicity’s size stood in the doorway.

  “Come on in,” Cam called.

  The rosy-cheeked woman, her gray hair held back by a bright green knitted headband, walked in and said hello. “I’m Sue Biellik. I just signed up for the CSA last week, and I saw your Facebook post about volunteering. I hope it’s all right for me to join in.”

  “Of course it is, Sue. I’m Cam Flaherty, farmer in chief.” Cam shook her hand. “Happy to have you.” She introduced Felicity and Alexandra. “Do you have any experience with gardening?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve always had a garden. But now I live in a condo, and I miss it so. This seemed like a good solution.”

  “So you know your weeds from your seedlings,” Alexandra said approvingly.

  “Indeed I do,” Sue said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Cam said.

  Preston trotted into the barn. He stopped cold when he saw the group.

  “Hey, kitty,” Sue said, squatting. She held out her hand. Preston examined her. He strolled straight to her hand, letting her stroke his thick coat. She looked up at Cam.

  “Who’s this handsome fellow?”

  Cam laughed. “Preston. You look like a cat person.”

  “I have three of these sweethearts at home.” She gave Preston one more stroke before standing. “And an English springer spaniel puppy, too, who’s driving me crazy right now.”

  “Sue Biellik,” Felicity said. “You taught a knitting class at Newburyport Adult Ed, right?”

  Sue laughed. “Last year, yes. Knitting is pretty much my life these days.”

  “I’m hopeless at it,” Felicity said with a wry smile. “I guess I’d better sign up for another class with you.” She glanced at Cam. “I wanted to say hello to your mom. Will she be helping us this morning?”

  Cam’s father peeked around the corner of the door. “No, Deb said she has some work to do. But I’m willing to lend a hand.” He chuckled and made his way in.

  “Daddy, please meet some of my friends and customers.” Cam introduced him to the three women. “And this is Professor William Flaherty.”

  “No formalities, now. Just call me William.” He shook each of their hands. “That is, I’ll help if Cammie will let me. I made a big mistake yesterday, apparently.”

  This time Cam actually rolled her eyes. What was it about her father that made her revert to teenage behavior? “We won’t be offering sweet peas in the shares for a while. So no, Daddy, you don’t get to weed.”

  He spread his hands. “I admit my crime, your honor.”

  Alexandra glanced at Cam and covered her mouth, suppressing a giggle.

  “But is there an alternative service you can assign me?” William went on.

  “I’d love your help with the chickens,” Cam said. “Think you can manage that?”

  “Yes, indeed,” he said. “You know, my grandparents had a chicken farm back in Paoli.”

  “I never knew that.” Cam pulled a mock frown. “Really?”

  “Indiana is a great place to raise birds. And of course your mother and I see chickens, or a similar species, in most of the indigenous cultures we visit. I’m good with those silly birds.”

  “You got it, then. Alexandra, can you find him a mucking shovel and grab a wheelbarrow for him? Show him the ropes?”

  Alexandra made a thumbs-up gesture and headed for the tool wall.

  After the two tall figures went out, Felicity’s face grew serious again. “Do you think your mother would mind if I pop into the house? I just wanted to say hello and . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Sure, go ahead. I don’t know what she’s working on. I’m not surprised she doesn’t want to help out here. She’s not really the farming type.” Cam hadn’t thought she herself was, either, until Albert had to have his foot amputated at the same time Cam was laid off her job as a software engineer in Cambridge. He’d offered her the farm and here she was, making a go of it. And not just surviving, but loving it. The hard work and fresh air turned out to be so much more appealing than sitting in a cubicle with her face glued to the screen and her body bent over a keyboard writing and debugging software every day.

  She watched Felicity walk briskly out of the barn. What did she want to talk to Deb about? Cam shook her head. Her mom and Felicity had had all day yesterday on the picket line to get to know each other. It could be anything. Cam headed out into the sunshine, determined to let good, honest hard work in the soil and fresh air take her mind off death.

  * * *

  When Felicity came back from greeting Deb a few minutes later, Cam asked, “You found Mom?”

  Felicity frowned but nodded.

  “Is everything okay?” Cam asked.

  “I guess. I thought she’d want to talk about Nicole, but she doesn’t.”

  “She’s like that. I wouldn’t take it personally.” Cam felt bad for Felicity, with her genuinely sunny, open attitude toward life, as unlike Deb Flaherty as could be.

  “All right.” Felicity mustered a little smile. “Where do you want me this morning?”

  Cam asked her to grab a hoe and join the volunteer in the potato field. After Alexandra helped William get started on the chickens, Cam set her to work planting out pepper seedlings. She directed several other customers who arrived to weed rows of lettuce and Asian greens and to hill up the potatoes. Cam rolled up the sides of the hoophouse. She began to water the lettuce starts and the new seedlings for the fall broccoli and cabbage.

  Last spring hadn’t been anywhere near as warm and dry as this one. She worried about her crops. She wasn’t set up to do serious irrigation, and she was afraid her well wouldn’t be able to handle being drained of massive amounts of water. The town water lines didn’t stretch out here, but even if they had, the cost would be prohibitive. She didn’t have a pond from which to pump water, and would have to acquire more hoses to reach sprinklers to the far field. But if she didn’t water or if rain didn’t come along soon, she’d lose her investment of seed and seedlings. Worse, she wouldn’t have enough product to dole out to her CSA customers.

  After she’d worked alongside her volunteers for a couple of hours, her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She pulled it out to read a text from Pete:

  Statement? Ivan’s waiting.

  Cam groaned. She had to do it, but the last thing she wanted to do was leave the work party, get cleaned up, and spend an hour with a humorless by-the-book detective. She let Felicity and Alexandra know she had to leave before heading to the coop to check on her dad. He sat on the ground inside the fenced-off area with a full wheelbarrow of sawdust mixed with droppings next to him. He was singing, and hens were all over him. Mama Dot, Cam’s Silver Laced Wyandotte, even sat on his head, her black-edged white feathers gleaming in the sun.

  “You do like chickens,” Cam said, smiling at him and his companions.

  “Indeed I do.” He beamed. He gently plucked Mama Dot off his head and set her on the ground. He boosted himself up to standing. “I noticed they’ve done a good job of laying. How do you want me to collect the eggs?”

  “Follow me.” She showed him the bucket in the barn. “The eggs need to be soaked and gently scrubbed before putting them in these flats.” She pointed to the sink next to the egg refrigerator. “Then they go in the fridge here. Thanks, Daddy. I appreciate the help.”

  “My pleasure. I’ve been either in my office or a classroom all year. I like to get out and do something physical once the semester is over.”

 
“I have to go downtown and give my statement to the police.” Cam frowned. “I hope I won’t be long.”

  “You run along, then. Don’t worry about us.”

  “Okay.” Cam turned to go, but stopped. “Um, Daddy?”

  “I know. No weeding.” He stood there grinning, his hair sticking up all which way from his head. Sawdust decorated the shoulder of his T-shirt, which read MY CAREER IS IN RUINS.

  Cam surprised herself by throwing her arms around him and hugging. He flapped his arms, finally bringing them to rest on her back. Not hugging, exactly, but touching. She pulled back.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” And she was. She didn’t think she’d ever felt this kind of rush of love for her father. Something about her new life of farming, of developing close friends, even of solving mysteries, had changed her. And especially to have him here now, when she was getting involved in another murder, was a comfort.

  “I’m glad, too.” He ruffled her hair before reaching for the bucket. “Got to get to those eggs, now.” He ambled off, bucket in hand.

  Chapter 7

  Ruth ushered Cam into an interview room thirty minutes later, her thick brown hair today in a tidy French braid. “Detective Hobbs will be here in a minute,” she said. She lowered her voice and added, “He’s kind of upset you took this long to come in.”

  Cam sighed. “I didn’t do anything wrong. And I have a farm to run.” She sat the table in the room. Westbury must have spent some money on paint recently. The walls were a warm cream color with butter green trim, and she detected a clean lemony smell. “It looks really nice in here. Like not institutional at all.”

  Ruth laughed. “The new thinking is to make people feel relaxed when they are interviewed. When you put people in an ugly cold room, people think jail and are less forthcoming. Or so the researchers say.” She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I think the interview method is a lot more important than what the room looks like.”

  The door swung open. A thin Ivan Hobbs bustled in. “Ms. Flaherty. Officer, thank you.” He shook hands with Cam before sitting at the end of the table. His dark blond hair looked freshly trimmed in a military-length cut, and his Oxford shirt was crisply pressed under a light blazer. He examined Cam out of dark eyes over a narrow nose. “I expected to see you much earlier this morning. Detective Pappas said he conveyed the necessity of this interview to you.”