Out of the Frying Pan

by Robin Allen

  “Dang,” I said, then heard a faint ringing behind me.

  My heart dialed all the way up to eleven as I whirled around, prepared to tackle someone if I had to. But as I scanned the crowd for a killer answering a call, I realized a timer had gone off in the kitchen.

  Naturally, Perry wasn’t there when I turned back, but Cory had appeared in the vicinity of the perfect place to hide evidence—the chicken coop. Coincidence or father-son collusion? I would soon find out. “Core!” I called, jogging up to him.

  He waited outside the door to the coop, his body language mumbling nothing but shame—head down, shoulders rounded, a face that could be measured in cubits. He looked up briefly. “Hey, Pop.”

  “How was jail?” I asked. “Ursula told me they serve a lot of bologna.”

  He sniffed out a laugh. “Jail sucks.”

  “As it should. Have you talked to your dad recently?”

  “Not since we got home,” he said. “I just woke up.”

  I wanted to box his ears and ask what he was thinking growing marijuana on his family’s farm! Didn’t he know that the farm was everything to them? How could he do something so reckless? How could he jeopardize their relationships and their livelihood by bringing something like that into their midst? But he had probably already heard it or would hear it from people who mattered to him more than I did. So I said, “You’re an idiot, Core.”

  He rubbed his face with both hands. “I know.”

  “Bjorn knew about your farm within a farm, didn’t he?”

  He toed some dirt over a squirt of chicken droppings.

  “And he threatened to expose you if you voted for Dana White and Herbivore.”

  He nodded, still not making eye contact with me.

  “Did you vote against her?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you know that Tanya voted for her?”

  His eyebrows lifted an inch. “She did?”

  “She said it’s how things should have gone.”

  “I bet Uncle Ian’s ticked.”

  “Ian didn’t want Dana here?”

  “Yes and no,” Cory said. “He wanted a restaurant, but he didn’t want it all organic.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wants the farm to go conventional. He says it’s too expensive to keep our organic certification and we can grow more and make more money.”

  “After all these years?”

  Cory shrugged. “Mister MBA put it into his brain. They’re all worried about costs, as usual.”

  “Which is why y’all switched to iodine to clean the vegetables,” I said. “Except for the party. What did you do with the peroxide after the demo?”

  He finally looked up at me. “The what?” Yes, he answered a question with a question, but he seemed truly confused rather than cannily evasive.

  “At the party, you and Brandon washed the vegetables with food-grade—”

  “Yeah, okay, that. I took it up to the house.”

  I sighed.

  “What?”

  “I’m having trouble with the timeline, Core. You said you stayed to make up more CSA boxes and then Ian called you to help him with the fence.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But Jerry Potter told me he was in the barn with you after the demo.”

  Cory covered more chicken droppings with dirt.

  “So what exactly happened to the bottle of peroxide?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I left it by the sink.”

  “Did you ever go help Ian with the fence that night?”

  He shook his head.

  I sighed again. Whether it’s a surprise inspection or a murder investigation, getting to the truth of something is so much more difficult when people lie.

  “I need to clean the coop,” Cory said.

  “And I need to talk to Mister MBA. Have you seen him?”

  “Not if I can help it. You might be able to spot him from up there.” He pointed to the staircase. “You can see the whole farm.”

  With my first step toward the staircase, my stomach began to white-knuckle. “Forget it,” I said to the hedge and changed course. Maybe Megan was still in the office and knew where Kevin was. Or Ian.

  When I passed the kitchen, I heard my name and turned to see the very Moist Brow Averter I had set out to find.

  Kevin stepped out of the doorway and said, “Mom says you’ve been snooping around our private family business.” His tone was smirky and combative. My favorite. It takes the uncertainty out of things.

  “Dana White is dead and I’m looking into the possibility of food poisoning.”

  “What does that have to do with Herbivore?” He took a step toward me, which forced me back.

  “Well, if your current health practices can’t keep deadly bacteria from contaminating a few simple ingredients, the health department has concerns about issuing a food permit for any future new restaurants.” Even as I spoke those words, I knew that Kevin would be quick enough to figure out that my answer didn’t exactly jive, so I followed it up with, “Did you know that Bjorn blackmailed Cory into voting against the restaurant?”

  He smiled smugly. “I know everything that goes on in this place.”

  He kept advancing on me, so I kept moving back, but I can retreat and entreat at the same time. “It was you arguing with Perry in the storage pantry after the washing demo the other night, wasn’t it? You said you didn’t want Dana here.”

  “I don’t. Didn’t.”

  “Your mom voted for Herbivore. What did she mess up for you?”

  “I think it’s time for you to leave,” he said. He took my elbow and escorted me down the walkway.

  “Dana was murdered, Kevi. She drank peroxide.”

  Kevin stopped and rocked back on his heels. “What?”

  I couldn’t tell if his surprise came from him not knowing that fact or realizing that I knew that fact. “Someone replaced the water in her drinking cup with food-grade hydrogen peroxide. I saw you sneaking out of the barn when the party was breaking up. What were you doing?”

  “It wasn’t me,” he said, conducting me toward the parking lot again.

  “It wasn’t you who killed Dana or it wasn’t you sneaking out of the barn?”

  “Both … neither.” Kevin let go of my arm when we reached the office. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Well someone drove your car out of the barn the night of the party. And yes, I’m sure it was yours.”

  “We leave the keys in them. It could have been anyone.”

  “Do you happen to know who?”

  “Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” He pointed at the parking lot. “Goodbye, Poppy.”

  “Tell me why you didn’t want Dana White at the farm.”

  “Goodbye, Poppy.”

  I walked slowly in the direction of my car, trying to dredge up something to say to reach détente with Kevi and get me back onto the farm. I would have to come up with something really good, like offer to make a contribution to his IRA or tell him which rainbow pooled into a pot of gold. Or … I could give him enough time to get involved with some farm business, then sneak back on.

  During this commercial break, I sat in my Jeep and went over the facts I had uncovered. Except for the vote switcheroo between Cory and Tanya, I was pretty sure the vote went along family lines. Perry, Megan, and Brandon voted for Dana, but Cory didn’t because of Bjorn; Ian and Kevin voted against her, but Tanya didn’t because she wanted to either maintain equilibrium or punt Bjorn off the farm and out of her life. So, from that slant, Ian, Kevin, Tanya, and Bjorn belonged high on the suspect list.

  So, who drove Kevin’s SUV out of the barn? I put myself on that staircase the night of the party and tried to remember who I had seen and where—Ian and Brandon shooing people out of the Field, Bjorn
standing outside the storage shed, Perry and Kevin talking in front of the office. Any one of them could have made it to the barn in less than a minute.

  I looked up but didn’t see Kevin on the sidewalk. Only a couple of subscribers with full bags squeezing between the two painted VW buses. And then one of the seeds I had planted in my mind began to germinate, and I realized I had been thinking locally instead of globally.

  Holy obviousness! I knew who killed Dana.

  Thirty

  The extravagant cars, the expensive four-wheelers, the push for conventional growing methods and using pesticide, putting costs ahead of values. Dana and her 100-percent organic fresh-from-this-particular-farm restaurant threatened to squash all of his plans, which meant reduced profits, which meant one very desperate Ian McDougal. Whether Ian was lured by his son Kevin, or he had found his own way to this consumerist aggression, Ian had changed his priorities and he needed operations at the farm to go in a new direction.

  Of course, the killer could also be Kevin for all those same reasons, but since he had just tried to shut down my investigation, I would have a go at Ian first.

  I shook my hair out of its ponytail, then slipped on my sunglasses and red jacket. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but I could work it long enough to sneak onto the farm. If Kevin was smart, and he was, he had already told his family that I was persona non grata. And if Ian had talked to Perry, he already knew that I suspected one of them of murder.

  But perhaps Ian hadn’t seen the smoke signals, so perhaps I still had the element of surprise.

  I got halfway across the parking lot before I realized that my backpack would give me away, doubled back to leave it in my Jeep, then circled to the left to come up from the other side of the parking lot. I kept my face down and affected a limp as I went down the sidewalk past the office to the washing shed. My veggie bags were where I had left them under the table, and if anybody asked, I would tell them that I came back for them.

  I took off my sunglasses and matador-red jacket and bundled them with my bags, then looked for Ian. I hadn’t seen him all morning, but, yeah, I expected him to materialize just because I wanted to talk to him.

  I had about convinced myself that ascending the staircase wouldn’t be that bad when I saw red hair riding in the four-wheeler coming from that direction, making straight for the barn. Ian. Finally!

  I waited for him to pull inside, then entered a few minutes later. He had pushed open the left side door, which cast bright morning light into the interior of the left side of the barn. The four-wheeler sat parked between the pyramid of hay bales in the center and one of the hay-filled stalls on the left.

  I heard movement at the back of the barn. “Ian?” I called. “It’s Iris and Mitch’s daughter, Poppy Markham.” I knew he heard me, or rather, he couldn’t have not heard me. I took a couple of steps into the barn, but not so far that I couldn’t flee in case he came at me with a pointy farm implement. “Ian?”

  He emerged from the shadows wearing heavy leather work gloves, a pitchfork in one hand and clippers in the other. Hell’s gardener.

  “Hi, Poppy,” he said as if he had expected me. He leaned the pitchfork against the front of the four-wheeler and entered the stall. “You working for the USDA now?” he asked as he bent down out of sight.

  “No,” I said, my eye on the pitchfork. “I’m still a county employee.”

  “And a curious one,” he said. He stood up and indicated that I should move to the right, then he tossed a tangle of baling wire past me. “Kevin said you’ve been asking about Dana’s restaurant.”

  “Oh? When did you talk to him?”

  Ian grabbed the pitchfork and started forking heaps of hay into the back of the four-wheeler. “Why are you so interested in the farm’s business?” he asked. “And don’t give me that line about food poisoning. Tanya told me you didn’t check any of the food.”

  Ian seemed angry, but that’s how he always comes across, so his tone didn’t tell me whether he knew of my true suspicions. Still, if my decision to be alone with a killer in a barn full of spiked and serrated tools were weighed on the great scale of dumbness, I would be crowned the Grand Poobess of Dumb.

  I wanted to solve this mystery, but I also wanted to live to see Ian get sentenced for it. I figured I had enough to take to the police. “You’re right,” I said. “I forgot to do that.” I backed up. “Is Tanya still in the kitchen?”

  I heard squeaking and became aware of darkness spreading through the barn, the shaft of light slowly condensing to a sliver. I saw a figure backlit in the doorway, but that person didn’t matter as much as Ian, whom I had turned away from. When I faced him again, I saw three fat iron tines pointed at me.

  Hadn’t I just decided to leave psychos well enough alone? And now I was trapped in the barn with one, possibly two. I didn’t know if the door-closer was friend or foe, but no one could be more foe than Ian. I backed into the right side of the barn to get a wide-angle view of both of them at the same time.

  The newcomer flipped on the light switch. Megan!

  Ian stabbed the pitchfork into hay. “This doesn’t concern you, Meg.”

  She shut the door the rest of the way and came toward us.

  “I’m handling this,” Ian said more forcefully.

  I looked at her and shook my head. No! He’s! Not!

  “You?” Megan said with a scornful laugh. “You don’t know how to handle anything.” Then she glared at me—the Grand Poobess of Dumb.

  “Are y’all really debating who’s going to get to kill me right in front of me?” I asked.

  “No!” Ian said at the same time Megan said, “Yes.”

  According to my calculations, those answers should have been reversed. “Which one of you killed Dana?” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” Ian asked.

  He sounded genuinely mystified, and I regarded his sister, trying to recast the facts to accuse her—Perry’s first love coming back to the farm as both Friends president and executive chef of Herbivore, back into Perry’s life. Dana the wolf hunting Megan’s sheep. The reason really was local—and universal. “You were jealous of Dana,” I said to Megan. “She threatened your pastoral life out here.”

  “She threatened all of our lives!” Megan said, heat singeing her words.

  “Meg, no,” Ian said. He still had his fist around the handle of the pitchfork, so his obvious surprise and dismay didn’t comfort me as much as it should have. He might either take his disappointment out on me or try to protect his sister. “Perry adores you,” he said.

  “And Dana hates me because of it!” Megan cried. “She’s the one who messed everything up for y’all in the beginning! She’s the one who came onto you, remember?”

  “That was a long time ago, Meg,” Ian said, his voice taking on a brotherly timbre. “Dana married Herb. We all moved on.”

  “And then she came back to steal Perry away and ruin our lives!” Megan looked up at Ian and took a breath. “I didn’t mean to … I wanted to make her sick, keep her away from us.”

  While Megan made Ian an accessory after the fact, I crabwalked slowly toward the barn doors.

  “Where are you going?” Megan demanded. “To the police? Or your boyfriend?”

  “Why would I go … oh, you mean Jamie. No. I need to get to work, actually. Tuesday is Monday for a lot of restaurants.”

  Megan threw her braid over her shoulder. “You’re not leaving, Poppy.”

  “Let her go, Meg,” Ian said.

  “She’s going to wreck everything,” Megan said. “Like Dana. What do you propose we do with her?”

  We waited for Ian to work out an answer. I could only imagine that in a choice between his sister, the farm, and life as he knew it and a nosy health inspector, he would choose—

  “Just let her go,” Ian said. “We can ask Cory’s lawyer for a family deal.�
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  I don’t know if he intended to be funny, but I laughed at his words as much as from relief that not all the fruit of their family tree had ripened on the crazy branch.

  Laughing, however, was the exact wrong thing to do.

  Megan flew at me and tackled me to the floor, my face a fraction away from cracking on an SUV’s tow ball. I had only ever engaged in hand-to-hand combat with my brother, Luke, so I did what I always did and kneed her in the groin. She grunted and flipped me onto my back as if preparing to tenderize the other side of the brisket, then straddled my stomach and kneeled on my arms.

  I’m strong, but I felt a physical authority and rage in her that I couldn’t match. She gripped my shoulders and slammed the back of my skull against the ground. The dirt floor cushioned the whacks, but a dozen more of those would make me dizzy and feeble. Or the whiplash would snap my neck.

  I used all of my strength to pin my head and shoulders to the ground, resisting her pull on them. Megan bent closer to me and strained to raise my shoulders, both of us sweating and panting. She smelled like pecan preserves. I rushed my head up and hit my forehead against her nose. She called me a bad word and listed to the right. I freed my right arm, then bucked and rolled her off of me. She kicked at me, connecting with my hip.

  I threw dirt in her face, then jumped up and sprinted to the barn door. But I had lost my sense of direction and when I stopped, I was farther inside the barn, behind the pyramid of hay bales. At least I would be able to see her coming from either side.

  And then the lights went out.

  Gah! No backpack, no cell phone, no flashlight, no rubber gloves. I didn’t know what I would do with that last item, but I could have MacGyvered a use for them. Maybe tied them together and made a slingshot.

  If I called out to Megan, I would give away my location, so I had to wait for her to give hers away. I slowed my breath to help calm my entire system and muffle the sound of blood running Olympic sprints through my veins. Then I tried widening my eyes in the darkness to give my pupils more room to dilate, but they didn’t take the hint.