Crowning the Slug Queen (A Callie Stone Mystery Book 1)

by L. M. Fortin

  Remembering Callie’s teenage stubbornness over any garden chores, Coral looked doubtful. “If you want. You’re here on vacation and I wouldn’t want to overwork you. But as the zucchini are ripe and there’s an early crop of tomatoes waiting to be canned, I can’t say I wouldn’t look any help in the eye.”

  “If there’s one thing this hippie experiment is good for, it’s canned tomatoes.” Grandma Minnie said, nodding her head sagely, her gray hair bun bobbing up and down. Her upbringing at the tail end of the Great Depression had given her a great appreciation for home canning and stocking up for winter. Although she constantly derided her daughter-in-law’s choice of lifestyle, Callie noted when it came to the bounty of the garden her Grandma and Mom shared the same values. Self-sufficiency, non-commercial preparation, and independence. Although Grandma came to it from a perspective that government wasn’t always going to be there to help, Mom wanted to get all government out of her life. Different paths, but the same result. Callie wondered if the two of them realized that. Maybe subconsciously they did and that’s want allowed them to get on together. Well, at least as much as they got on together.

  Callie got up and took the plates to the sink. “Now, just let me clean up, you must be tired after your trip.” Her mom pushed her out of the way. Of course, there was no dishwasher.

  “Well, you can at least let me dry.” She grabbed a towel.

  Grandma Minnie sipped her tea. “How’s that Peter of yours?” she asked.

  As she picked up the first dinner plate, Callie said, “He’s not mine anymore.” She was surprised at how easy that was to say. “He moved on to someone else.”

  “I always thought he was a loser,” said Grandma Minnie. Peter had accompanied Callie on her last visit home to her friend Audrey’s wedding. He had always gently ribbed her about coming from the sticks, and his time in Skinner didn’t improve his impression any. Although Callie sometimes shared Peter’s opinion Skinner was a bit of a backwater, his inability to hide his disdain did nothing to endear him to her family.

  Peter had trouble seeing suit wearing, shoe fetish Callie doing anything in her mom’s garden. He knew her for her taste in wine and fine dining. He was outwardly amused at the Cloudburst Pub and would only drink the one Napa wine on the menu. She had taken him wine tasting and it was disastrous, as he declared anything from the Willamette Valley as ‘undrinkable.’ They hadn’t come back to Skinner.

  Callie realized that even during that visit, she hadn’t fully agreed with Peter. She just didn’t say anything to him, trying to find some balance between the life she loved on the East Coast and the parts of Skinner she enjoyed. Certainly, she had been glad enough to leave Skinner as a teen, no argument there. But she always liked to think of it as a retreat. Some place where the world was at bay because the Skinnertons fought to keep it so. Independent of thought and of action, there was something hopeful in the idea that the town would wait for her and be there when she needed to return.

  Callie had enjoyed both Skinner and the wedding, even if Peter was unimpressed. Audrey, with her usual impeccable taste, had chosen a venue on the Willamette River just outside of town. Callie didn’t often get to attend events as a just a guest and she took full advantage of the evening, drinking, dancing and generally having a good time.

  Audrey married her high school sweetheart, Scooter McMillian. During high school their relationship had always had an on-again, off-again tendency and Callie had been surprised to hear they finally settled on getting married. She was even more surprised to get an invitation to the wedding as she and Audrey had fallen out of touch when Callie went off to college.

  Audrey and Callie had been as close as sisters the first two years of high school. Callie supposed she spent almost as many nights at Audrey’s house during those first years of high school as she did at her own.

  But once Audrey and Scooter had started dating in the middle of junior year that changed. Although Audrey continually called Callie when she and Scooter were on the outs, their closeness disappeared. In fact, Callie grew resentful Scooter got Audrey when she was in a good mood and Callie only got her when she had something to complain about. Usually about Scooter.

  Callie really didn’t think much of Scooter McMillan. In retrospect, she thought her ambiguity might have some basis in jealousy as he got all the good times with Audrey. He was a typical high school jock, football player, middling grades. It wasn’t that he had ever been mean to her, it’s just when she was next to Audrey sometimes she felt as if she faded into nothingness. Sort of like an old chair nobody noticed until they crashed into it.

  Of course, she probably wasn’t the only person who felt insignificant in the presence of Audrey Wolcott. While most high school girls were awkwardly stumbling into their adolescence, Audrey seemed as if she had emerged from Venus’ clamshell fully formed. Tall and willowy with vibrant red hair, she had seemed almost a goddess when Callie had been paired with her in Science class.

  She hadn’t realized it at the time, for she played Robin to Audrey’s Batman, always the sidekick, but Audrey hadn’t been that smart academically. The pairing in science class had been good for both of them. Audrey got to share Callie’s academic skills and Callie got to glean knowledge on fashion and sheer stage presence.

  She idolized Audrey and even though she felt abandoned by her when Scooter came along, she always ran back when Audrey snapped her fingers. She thought maybe that was something she and Scooter might have had in common.

  She returned to the dish drying. “Any good gossip from town? I’ve been out of touch for a while and don’t really get any news. Unless it’s you guys telling me about a new goat.”

  Coral laughed. “I am so happy with the kid. Your grandma named her Basil.”

  “Isn’t that a boy’s name? Like Basil Rathbone or something?” Callie asked.

  “Basil is a fine name for a girl.” Grandma Minnie said. “It’s genderless—like olive—or what did that silly star name her daughter—apple?”

  “The city council is bickering about a new bus line,” said Coral.

  Callie was surprised. “Really? I thought Skinner was the city most likely to ban cars in favor of bikes and mass transit.”

  “I still think that’s the case,” said Coral. “But there are some business owners who are complaining the bus line will be bad for business. It’s apparent to me those are the folks who’ve never been anywhere on a bus. They’re always packed.”

  “Are you still in touch with Audrey McMillan?” asked Grandma.

  “She means, Audrey Wolcott,” said Coral.

  “I mean what I mean,” snapped Grandma. “She’s not gone back to Wolcott yet. I heard it at the salon.”

  “What do you mean ‘not gone back to Wolcott’?” said Callie.

  “She and that football player of hers have split up. Rumor has it he slept around on her and she kicked him out,” said Grandma.

  “Didn’t they just have kids?” asked Callie.

  “Yes, twin girls with hair as red as fire. What a couple of cuties. Audrey had them just over a year ago I think.”

  Callie vaguely remembered seeing something about that through one of her friends on Facebook, but she had never spent much time social networking with her friends in Skinner. She was always busy with work or Peter.

  “Maybe I’ll have to go and see her while I’m in town,” said Callie.

  “That might be nice. She might like to be reminded of the good ol’ days of high school,” said Grandma. “Did you hear Dot Felson is up for Mayor of the World?”

  “I didn’t realize there was an election for that,” laughed Callie.

  “Not Mayor of the World, but World Mayor,” said Coral, giving a sharp glance at Grandma Minnie. “It’s an international award given to someone who is truly a leader in their community. I think Dot is a fine candidate for such an award.”

  “Humph,” was all Grandma replied.

  The dishes were dry and Callie put them away in the cupboard. “
Isn’t Skinner a pretty small community to be in competition for that type of award?”

  Coral sniffed. “We may be small, but we have international impact. We continually support the rights of the homeless and we are working on a resolution to get out of the war in Iraq. We’re also a nuclear free zone.”

  Callie always laughed to herself at the thought of that. That designation could only stand for as long as no one else decided to lob a nuclear bomb into your midst. But the sentiment was nice. Very Skinnerton.

  Pie eaten and dishes done, Callie went back out to the car, led by the solar pathway lights to get her luggage, the earlier rain having slowed to almost nothing. She met her mom in the cottage behind the main house.

  The cottage had begun life as a shop for the farm. It was really just one large room and when Callie’s mom had purchased the house and land, it had been filled with remnants of tools, boxes of old farm detritus, and spiders. The outbuilding hadn’t looked like much, but when empty it was over a thousand square feet.

  Coral had added plumbing to the space with a bathroom in the back. She built in a kitchen along the north wall that had a full stove, refrigerator and sink. Now it reminded Callie of the large warehouse apartments in New York. The remainder of the space was mostly open, broken up into areas for sleeping and living by artful use of a multitude of bookcases.

  Although she fully supported the WWOOFer’s while they were working for her, Coral liked them to have their own independent space. Sometimes the workers were from countries whose dietary choices didn’t mirror that of Americans, even on an organic farm. Callie remembered stories of a pair of Nigerians and their fish head soup. The soup’s pungent aroma lingered for well over a month once they’d moved on to their next agricultural adventure. At least they were using the entire fish, which was very ecofriendly, thought Callie.

  At the south end of the large room was an area blocked off for the bedroom. The double bed was covered by a patchwork quilt sewn by Grandma Minnie.

  “There are other blankets here in the closet,” said Coral, opening a large free-standing farm style cupboard.

  Callie looked at what Coral was calling a closet. As half of the cupboard was taken up with extra blankets, Callie was glad she had only brought a few things as there was no room for her boxes of shoes here. She wouldn’t want to get mud and rainwater on her Jimmy Choos anyway.

  “I won’t wake you in the morning.” Coral knew the three hour time difference between Skinner and New York would affect Callie for a few days. “But if you wake and want to work in the garden, there’s some zucchini picking to be done tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, mom. It’s good to be home.”

  “It’s good to have you honey,” Coral said, giving her a hug.

  As Coral left the room, Callie realized that her words weren’t all just for forms sake. She really was glad to be home. As she wasn’t sleepy quite yet, even with the time difference, she unpacked her bags and went into the living area.

  The low couch was comfy and although there was no TV, there was electricity, so Callie plugged her laptop in. Coral had Wi-Fi installed at the farm both for her business and for the WOOFer’s.

  She went to the fridge and found her mom had thoughtfully put in some milk and other basic necessities. There was even a six pack of Cloudburst Liquid Sunshine Ale. Callie supposed even the ecologically friendly had to support local brewers.

  She grabbed herself a beer and settled on the couch. Forty-eight hours ago, she had done roughly the same thing in NYC, but somehow, these same actions felt very different here.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next morning Callie woke and lay in the bed with an odd feeling she couldn’t identify. Was she homesick for New York? Was she hankering for a Starbucks? Was she missing Peter?

  No, she thought, it’s the fact she wasn’t missing or worried about anything. There wasn’t a single thing tugging on her conscience for once. No Bill Batson texting her about tasks he wanted her to do that day, no decision of what suit and shoes to wear. No discussion with Peter about his latest audition or crabby customer. She wondered if it was possible to get used to this.

  After a shower in the cramped bathroom, she dried her auburn hair and pulled it into a ponytail. She slipped on her most casual jeans, even though they had cost $120, and tried to figure out what to wear for shoes. Her selection of what would be termed sneakers was limited to a pair of Burberry’s with their signature check print. She might be thinking of embracing the simple life, but destroying her designer shoes wasn’t quite yet the plan.

  She searched the other cupboards in the cottage and came up with a pair of black rubber rain boots that fit well enough for today. Maybe she’d head into town later and see if the shopping options in Skinner had improved any since she had last visited.

  As close to properly attired as she was going to get, she stepped outside and had her first look at her childhood nemesis, the garden. In the distance, at the farthest end of the field from the house was a small barn that housed her mom’s growing goat family and a half a dozen chickens. Nearest the house was this year’s fallow plot, growing grass and clover. Although most of the crops were rotated yearly, Coral devoted almost half of the space to a grass and clover meadow she flipped with the other sections of the garden every few years.

  Callie could see the bean and pea section with its strings and poles already lush with leafy green plants. She remembered bean picking to be one of the worst tortures of all the garden chores. It had always seemed no matter how many beans she picked her bucket never filled. Then her mom would come over and find handfuls of beans left in areas Callie had supposedly already picked. Well, she wasn’t in for bean picking today.

  She went to the main house and went into the kitchen by the back door. The counters were piled with faceted glass canning jars and their distinctive round metal lids. A large kettle of water was beginning to steam on the stove.

  “Rise and shine, sleepyhead!” said Grandma Minnie. “That city life is making you soft.”

  Callie covered a yawn with her hand. “Well, when I woke up at what was my usual six a.m., it was three a.m. here. I had trouble falling back asleep. It’ll take me a few days to get a full night’s sleep. Did I miss breakfast?”

  Callie knew breakfast was usually the most edible meal in Coral’s household. “Yes, I saved some scrambled eggs for you. There’s fresh bread and some goat cheese to spread on it.” Grandma Minnie pointed to a covered skillet on the stove next to the boiling pot. “Mind the kettle, it’s hot.”

  Callie smiled at being treated like she was still an awkward teenager bumbling around the kitchen. “Thanks. Is there any coffee?”

  “Only instant. If you want something fancy, you’ll have to head into town.” Skinner’s love affair with coffee was almost as great as Seattle’s. For such a relatively small town, the per capita number of coffee shops catapulted it into the top ten lists of caffeinated cities, if you believed such statistics. Callie supposed it was the fact that winter was so often gray and misty, and coffee was an effective antidote to such weather.

  Callie decided to just stick with milk and sat down at the table to eat. “Where’s mom?”

  “She’s out getting the first round of tomatoes,” said Grandma Minnie. Callie realized the two of them had a good partnership. Although Callie’s mom shouldered most of the meal preparation duties, Grandma Minnie provided the expertise necessary to preserve the bounty of the garden Coral worked so hard to manage. For vegetables and eggs the farm was self-sufficient and even managed to barter the leftovers into things like fabric, soap and other household items Coral didn’t want to spend time making. Grandma Minnie was not only an able seamstress, but had never met a vegetable she couldn’t freeze, can or pickle in some way. She believed a full pantry could see you through some mighty troubled times.

  Callie wondered if her own attachment to designer clothing was in reaction to all the homemade clothes she had to weather through as a teenager. As soon as she was do
wn to the end of the drive, before she got to the bus stop, Callie would remove whatever Grandma Millie sewn piece of clothing she had been made to wear that day and replace it with something bought with her dearly saved allowance. She also borrowed clothes from Audrey’s copious closet.

  Callie had envied Audrey’s life back then. Her parents had divorced and so Audrey was being brought up by her lawyer dad. His life seemed very busy to Callie and she had seen him only rarely. Audrey had been on her own a lot, which was fine with both teenagers. He didn’t really even track her spending as long as she was happy. Callie now thought that although Audrey’s father loved her, he wasn’t really prepared to raise a daughter on his own.

  The eggs, fresh from the henhouse were delicious, as was the brown bread she smeared with the crumbly goat cheese. “Who made the cheese? Have you added that to your preserving skills?”

  “No, that seems like a mess of trouble. It’s milk from our goat, but we give it to a place down the road that has a whole herd of them. We also give them some canned goods. In exchange, they give us some goat cheese once or twice a month. Seems like a fair deal to me.”

  With her mouth full of bread and cheese, Callie agreed.

  Coral came into the kitchen with a bushel basket full of tomatoes. “Morning, Carline. We won’t be picking any more tomatoes today. It’s still a bit too early for a large haul. But these would go to waste if we didn’t get them put up today.” Only Coral ever called her by her full name. Callie guessed it was some sort of mother’s prerogative.

  Oregon’s weather could be notoriously finicky and in some years it was too cool to really start a garden by the end of May or early June. Callie’s mom had a greenhouse and started some plants there trying to get prepared for when the weather finally turned to summer, but tomatoes were always a challenge. It was already August and they were just beginning to ripen.