Danger Cove Farmer's Market 02 - A Slaying in the Orchard

by Gin Jones

  I didn't think Ethan Harding, the consumer sciences teacher, would let the kids use a grill unsupervised, but I had to be absolutely sure. "Thanks for letting me know," I told Sweetwater. "You can go on back to your stall while I go check on the grills. We wouldn't want you to lose out on business while you're watching out for other people."

  I didn't wait for his response, just took off running, careful to avoid the memorial stones that sometimes jutted out unevenly to constitute a tripping hazard for anyone in too much of a rush. I'd heard that the town had come into some money to improve the maintenance on the stones, but the work hadn't started yet.

  As I approached the Police Foundation's setup, it was immediately obvious that there was plenty of adult supervision for the three teens doing their demonstration. They were making vegetable skewers on the grill that had previously had hot dogs on it. I thought I recognized some of the unusually colored cherry tomatoes from Fordham Farms in the mix. While the students pushed the vegetables onto presoaked bamboo skewers, two adults wearing aprons printed with the Police Foundation's logo kept an eye on the young chefs. I didn't know the middle-aged woman, but I recognized the older man as Aaron Pohoke, a local attorney.

  By the time I arrived, the teens had attracted a bit of a crowd for their demonstration. They were giving out samples, and the tip jar on the corner of the table was filling rapidly. The Police Foundation volunteers seemed to be enjoying the break from their duties, taking advantage of the low demand for anything from the remaining grill to tidy up their supplies and prepare for the next wave of customers.

  After a minute or two the aproned woman seemed satisfied with the stacks of napkins and sandwich wrappers and the display of condiments. She came out from behind the table and headed in my direction. She was perhaps a few inches shorter than me, with thick dark hair that she'd pulled up in a no-nonsense bun.

  "Can I help you?" she asked.

  "No, thanks. I'm the market manager, Maria Dolores, and I was just following up on something a concerned citizen brought to my attention, but it seems that he was misinformed."

  "What's Sweetwater been tattling about this time?" she asked.

  "Now, Catherine," her fellow volunteer, Aaron Pohoke, said from right behind her, "you shouldn't name names unless you're absolutely sure."

  She rolled her eyes. "I am absolutely sure."

  Aaron shook his head and left us to go back to overseeing the teen chefs, muttering something about how if he didn't hear the slander, he couldn't be called as a witness.

  The woman held her hand out to me. "I'm Catherine Cooper, the town's medical examiner. You probably already know my overly cautious friend over there, attorney-at-law Aaron Pohoke."

  "I do know him," I said. "And you were right about the source of the complaint that brought me over here. Although, to be fair, what Sweetwater told me was technically true. He said there weren't any cops overseeing the kids. You and Aaron aren't cops."

  "He would split hairs like that," Dr. Cooper said. "He should have been a lawyer. Maybe then he wouldn't have been miserable all the time."

  "And he wouldn't have had time to be a farmer and make me miserable."

  "So can I interest you in a burger?" Dr. Cooper asked. "It's for a good cause."

  "No, thanks. I really need to get back to work." I glanced at the teens who had finished their demonstration and were cleaning the grill so it could go back to the more mundane and less healthy hot dogs. "I'm surprised you aren't at work now yourself, given the two active homicide cases."

  "There isn't that much to do on them yet. I'm waiting for lab reports and possibly an additional body or three from the orchard. Even if they find another corpse, it's not like my being away from the office for a couple of hours will matter much, not if the bodies have been in the ground as long as Ryan Palmer was," she said. "Besides, a girl can't spend her entire life in the morgue. I'd promised my son that I'd take him to the market today while I worked a shift for the Foundation. You just missed Ty. He took his dog over to see if any of his shelter mates were still waiting for adoption. Ty thinks he can play me and his father off each other and get himself a second dog. Or perhaps a cat or six. He's a big believer in 'more is better.' Except when it comes to chores. Like cleaning up after his pets."

  "My younger brothers and sisters were the same way, except my mother wasn't as good at saying 'no' as you are." Each of my four siblings had had at least two pets most of the time, and I'd done more than my fair share of their dog-walking and litterbox duties. Once I'd moved out on my own, I'd held off getting my own pet so I'd be free to travel as much as I wanted without worrying about how the animal would be cared for while I was gone. Perhaps after I finally had a more permanent place to live, I'd go see what was available for adoption from the Second Chance Animal Rescue. Considering all the animals at Merle's place, from dogs and cats to goats, I wouldn't have to worry about a no-pets policy if I ended up in his caretaker's cabin. Or in the more distant future, if I ended up in the main house with Merle.

  Now that the teens' demonstration was over, people were starting to remember that they'd originally headed in this direction to get some lunch. Aaron called Dr. Cooper back to help fill buns with hot dogs or sausages while he took the orders.

  I checked in with the teens, who were packing up a cardboard box with their grilling tools and leftover skewers. I noticed there weren't any leftover vegetables to carry back with them.

  "Good job with the demonstration," I told them. "I'll let your teacher know how popular it was."

  "Thanks, Ms. Dolores," they chanted in unison, except for the short, chubby teen in the gray pinstriped bib apron who'd originally complained about their grill being too small.

  He said, "Tell him we sold out of everything. Next time we'll need more produce and more skewers."

  The combined appeal of the good food and the young chefs was just the sort of thing that would get the Lighthouse Farmers' Market some increased recognition as an interesting place to go, among both local residents and tourists. "Would you be interested in doing more demonstrations in the future?"

  "Sure." The chubby teen answered for his friends, who nodded in agreement. "But if you really want to do it right, we would need a commercial grill for the demonstrations. Mr. Harding is always telling us about the importance of using the very best tools and equipment we can afford. The Police Foundation is only using a regular backyard grill. It's better than the puny one in our stall, but it's still not big enough to show everything we can do, and they're not really designed to let people see what the chef is doing, since the cover gets in the way."

  "What if I rented a commercial grill and set it up out in this area for all of the vendors to share?" I thought the fire chief would find the idea an improvement over the current compromise. The single grill would be out where it was accessible to the fire trucks, and there wouldn't be any in the more difficult-to-reach spaces. The total square inches of grill surface would remain the same, but all the vendors would have the opportunity to show off their recipes instead of just a few getting to do demonstrations.

  "We couldn't afford to rent it for regular market days, but perhaps for the Halloween weekend event? Would that work?"

  "You'd have to consider how best to assign when each vendor can use the grill so it's fair," the teen said. "Some times of the day will be more popular than others."

  He was right. Most of the vendors would simply be grateful for the increased opportunity to do a demonstration, but Sweetwater would undoubtedly blame me if he were assigned what he considered a suboptimal time slot, and I hated to reward him for his bad behavior by giving him the best possible slot in order to ward off his complaints. "Perhaps Mr. Harding could make figuring out a fair schedule into a class assignment."

  The teen nodded. "He'd like that. And we could also give you some specs to look for when choosing the grill."

  "I'd appreciate that."

  "Just don't let Sweetpants get anywhere near the grill," another t
een said scornfully.

  He almost made me feel sorry for Sweetwater. It probably wasn't easy being a high school guidance counselor, and his name had to be an extra burden.

  "If the market's paying the rental fee for the grill, I can't play favorites among the vendors. Everyone has to get a turn if they want one."

  "Oh, he'll want one," the previously scornful teen said without a hint of sarcasm. "He's big on everything being perfectly equal. Which is stupid, really, because some people need more and some need less."

  Someone snickered. "What he gives everyone is equal, all right. Equally worthless advice."

  "That's why I'm counting on your class to come up with a good, fair plan for the grill usage." It dawned on me that the teens might not have as much confidence in their teacher as I did. "Mr. Harding can help you do that, right?"

  "Oh yeah, he's great," the scornful teen said. "He's helped us more with our plans for after graduation than the official guidance counselor ever could. Probably because we stopped listening to Sweetpants by the end of our first week in high school. He corrected every single thing that anyone did, from the moment we walked in the door on the first day. We could see that no one in the upper grades was doing what he suggested, and they didn't suffer any consequences, so it would have been stupid for us to pay him any attention."

  No wonder Sweetwater seemed so bitter, I thought. It couldn't be easy for him, thinking he had all the answers and yet being universally ignored. I'd have to try to be a little nicer to him from now on. Perhaps I could find some little thing he could be responsible for at the market so he'd feel useful. I couldn't think of anything offhand, since it would have to be something that was useful and yet it wouldn't matter if, as was his normal modus operandi, all he did was complain about it without actually getting anything done.

  Next time he told me "someone should do something," I would agree and give him the assignment. That ought to keep him out of my hair for a bit.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The teens took off for their stall, and I stayed behind to check on the vendors outside the main market area. The crime scene was out of their line of sight, but they'd known Henry and might have some ideas about who had wanted the woodworker dead.

  The Cinnamon Sugar Bakery had its usual line outside the pushcart, although Officer Fields had managed to drag himself away from temptation for the moment. He was over in the shade of a tree where the Second Chance Animal Rescue had its cages and a small fenced-in area for kids, like Catherine's son, to audition possible pets.

  Next to the bustling Dangerous Reads tent, Keith Nettles was doing noticeably less business than he'd done the day before. The Procession of Saints was long over, so people were coming to the market and visiting other vendors, just not him. I couldn't help seeing the current lack of customers as evidence suggesting he might indeed have been profiteering before by offering buyers what amounted to a ringside seat to the crime scene.

  Everyone else was doing a brisk business. The Clip and Sip had a steady stream of customers for their face-painting services across the entire spectrum of ages. While kids got painted for free, adults were charged a nominal fee that then went to the owner's favorite charity, Wigs for Kids.

  At the moment Gia Di Mitri was taking a bit of a break while the salon's owner, Cassidi, worked on what I assumed was a member of the Danger Cove Quilt Guild, since the middle-aged woman was getting what looked like a complicated quilt pattern painted on her forehead.

  I went over to where Gia was seated on her "throne" and was checking something on her phone. The throne was made out of a stylist's chair draped with gold cloth, and it was generally reserved for kids and the young at heart. I'd seen the president of the Quilt Guild sitting in it earlier. Gia had replaced the loincloth-clad Egyptian palm wavers who'd flanked her during the Independence Day weekend with Roman gladiators who'd apparently forgotten their upper-body armor, or perhaps it hadn't fit over their well-developed chest muscles. They stood in front of the chair now, warning anyone who dared to approach that the station was temporarily closed.

  Gia stopped them before they could send me away. "Are you here for some face paint? I could do something to match your manicure."

  I automatically spread out my fingers in front of me, admiring the little flags she'd painted on the nails a few days ago. "I wish I could stay, but I don't have time right now. I just stopped by to thank you for helping with Jazz yesterday. I hope she told you to send me a bill."

  "I told Cassidi. She takes care of the money," Gia said. "I was just happy that Jazz let me fix her up. She was a serious mess. That couldn't be good for her business. Besides, there was no one waiting in line, and it only took me like two minutes to do. She wouldn't let me do anything really fun. You'd think an artist like her would be more adventurous."

  Jazz had been gone for a lot longer than two minutes. After she'd left, I'd visited the consumer sciences stall and then Cicely's Thyme for Tea for the better part of half an hour, and I hadn't seen Jazz come back in all that time. I might have missed her if she'd returned while I was meeting Tommy's girlfriend, but I didn't think so. Besides, I'd been keeping half an eye out for Cary, who'd been told to report back to me as soon as he wasn't needed at Snazzy-Jazzy Fibers any longer, and he hadn't shown up until after the body had been found. He always followed my instructions to the letter, so I doubted he'd dallied after Jazz had returned. So where had she been all that time? Even adding ten minutes for the walk down to The Clip and Sip's setup and back, that left close to half an hour unaccounted for.

  "Did you see where Jazz went when you were finished?"

  Gia shook her head. "I can't remember. I was a little distracted when she left, so I didn't pay much attention to where she went. There was this really hot guy waiting to get his daughter's face painted, and I was trying to find out if he was married."

  "Was he?"

  "Yeah, unfortunately for me." Gia made a face. "Having morals is such a drag." She perked up again. "Hey, what's up with you and Merle? I heard you two were seeing each other."

  "It's complicated," I said.

  "Long-distance relationships never work out," Gia said. "I learned that from Vogue Italia."

  "It's not distance that's keeping us apart. It might even be the opposite. Merle offered me the use of his caretaker's cabin until I can find a place of my own here in Danger Cove."

  "What's wrong with that?" Gia asked. "Is it some sort of Green Acres thing, where you're all about the city and shopping, and he's all about the fresh air and barn mucking?"

  "I'm not much of a shopper," I said. "Except when it comes to things like T-bills and IPOs. I'm more concerned about being too indebted to him. It can make for a complicated personal relationship."

  "Don't be ridiculous," Gia said. "You're thinking too much like a stuffy old accountant. Cassidi's like that too, really great with numbers, but she doesn't have any common sense. Sounds like you don't either, so I'll have to rescue you the same way I do with my cousin. And I won't even charge you for the advice, since you're such a good customer of The Clip and Sip. Unless you think that would make for a complicated professional relationship between us."

  I was tempted to say yes, because I doubted Gia's advice would work for me, any more than I could imagine ever wearing the smoke-eye makeup she reveled in. But now I was curious. It wasn't like I had to actually follow her advice. My clients had certainly ignored a great deal of my professional advice.

  "I think I can accept a gift this once."

  "Just remember to credit the Di Mitri family rulebook if you pass it along to anyone else." Gina held her hand out to one of the gladiators, who offered her his arm for assistance as she slid out of the throne. "It's simple, really. Never let money get between you and a guy you've got the hots for. If you want Merle, then the cabin doesn't matter. And if you don't want him, well, then the cabin still doesn't matter."

  * * *

  Gia had no sooner finished giving me her advice than I heard Merle calling
my name.

  I spun to see him jogging up from the parking lot, too far away to have heard the conversation with Gia.

  When I turned back to her, she'd already collected her paints and brushes and had a client on the throne. The ten-year-old girl was complaining that the offered sparkly temporary tattoos were silly. "Don't you have anything for scientists? I like chemistry."

  "I could draw an atom," Gia said easily.

  "Could it be radioactive? Because that would be fierce."

  "Oh, I can totally do radioactive."

  Gia had it under control, so I gave her a wave and headed over to the Memorial Walkway so I could walk with Merle to his stall.

  He caught up with me a moment later. "No face paint for you today?"

  "Are you trying to tell me I need more makeup?"

  "Absolutely not," he said. "You're perfect just the way you are."

  "It's no wonder you were a successful lawyer if you were always that fast with a compliment," I said. "I'm not feeling perfect this weekend. Jim Sweetwater has been quick to tell me everything I'm doing wrong, Keith Nettles blames me for his own failure to read the market information packet, and on top of all that, the Dangerous Duelers tell me I'm no fun."

  "Sweetwater is a jerk, Keith Nettles, whoever that is, is a moron, and you're plenty of fun."

  "Again with the smooth talk," I said, although it did make me smile. "I know I'm not perfect, and there have been a few glitches today, but at least there haven't been any more dead bodies here. How about at the orchard?"

  "No more corpses there either," Merle said, taking my arm and tugging me back in the direction of the Police Foundation's grills. "And from what I can gather, the police are starting to piece together what happened to Ryan Palmer before he was buried in my yard. Detective Ohlsen didn't tell me much, but it's pretty obvious that he thinks the goat farmer next door to the orchard knows something, might even have been an accomplice. I may be looking for a new supplier for the goats that weed my orchard."