Til Dirt Do Us Part (A Local Foods Mystery)

by Edith Maxwell

  “It’s policy. Need to establish whereabouts of all concerned parties.” He sounded like he was reciting from a manual.

  “I didn’t kill Irene, if that’s what you mean by ‘concerned.’ I cleaned up and went to bed. It had been an exhausting day.”

  “What time did you go to bed?”

  “I think it was ten forty-five.”

  “Anyone else on the property at that time?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “All right.”

  “I need to get back to work. Do you want the note?” At his nod, Cam led the way to the house. They walked in silence. As they neared the house, he spoke.

  “What is it with you and murder . . . ?” Pappas’s voice trailed off, sounding like he was almost too tired to finish the question.

  “It’s nothing with me and murder! You know I wasn’t involved in Mike’s murder. It just happened to occur in my greenhouse. And it’s not my fault people argued with Irene at the dinner. Or that she turned up dead.”

  “Yeah. Don’t get all defensive on me. Where’s this reputed note, anyway? You’re not the only one who needs to get back to work.” He sank onto the top step of the back stairs.

  “I’ll get it.” Cam let the screen door slam—maybe that would wake him up—and headed for the kitchen counter. She stopped and stared. The countertop looked the same as she had left it that morning. And there was no white envelope next to the phone. She checked all her pockets. Empty except for a piece of twine and a short pencil. Cam picked up the heavy black rotary phone, which must have been new four decades earlier. No note behind it. Nothing under it. She checked through the clutter. No note. What had she done with it? She thought back. She had walked in, put the note down, called Pappas, and gone back out to her garlic on the picnic table in the yard.

  Gone back out. A chill crept around her heart. Before she’d resumed separating the bulbs, she hadn’t locked the house door. When she’d shown Pappas the tent site, she thought they’d be out there only a minute, out of sight of the house for only a brief time. She knew she’d left the note on the counter. But it wasn’t there.

  Cam groaned. Now what was the detective going to think of her? He’d never believe her story. She decided to get the scene over with as quickly as possible and called to him to come in.

  He obliged, grumbling, “Just hand over the evidence, Ms. Flaherty. Some of us have jobs besides planting garlic.”

  She shoved her hands in her pockets. “The note is gone. I left it right on the corner of the counter. It’s not here.”

  “Oh, criminy, Cam.”

  His use of her nickname startled her. He’d always addressed her as either Cameron or Ms. Flaherty.

  “Where did you see it last?” He cocked his head.

  “I know it was here when I called you. All I did was go sit outside and split up garlic bulbs. In full sight of the house, I might add. Then we walked out back, where we weren’t in sight of the house. Maybe whoever wrote it wanted to get it back and was watching me.” Cam raised her eyebrows and cocked her head.

  “Jeez, Louise. Either you have an imagination fitting a fantasy writer or you’re . . . Well, let me know if this reputed note ever reappears. And don’t waste my time unless you have something actually in hand, all right?”

  “Wait. Whoever took could still be in here.” She still felt a chill unrelated to the temperature. “Would you go through the house with me?”

  He rubbed his head. “All right.”

  He stomped through the house and down the stairs without saying good-bye.

  Cam swore to herself as she slammed the door shut behind him and threw the dead bolt. She knew she wasn’t crazy. But the creep factor of thinking she was being watched lingered even though her house was clear. Suddenly, the prospect of working alone in the fields all afternoon lost its attraction.

  Chapter 4

  Two hours later Cam was back in the fields. After lunch and catching up on some bookkeeping, she resigned herself to the fact that farming didn’t harbor indulgences like fear. She stuck her cell phone in her back pocket and made sure the door to the house was securely locked. She pocketed the house key, too.

  Tomorrow was shareholder pickup day. She couldn’t stand up her three dozen subscribers, most of whom were avid locavores, devoted to eating primarily locally grown food. Make that one less, now that Irene would no longer be claiming her share. Cam could donate the produce to the food bank in Newburyport. Or maybe she’d accept it as a slight lightening of her workload, selfish as that seemed.

  She had squash to harvest, fall greens to cut, Brussels sprout stalks to gather, beets to dig, and so much more. She could postpone planting the garlic to another day. It only had to get in the ground anytime before the ground froze in December. At least today the sun had reemerged and the clouds had burned off. The night would get cold, but for the next few hours she could use some brightness in this day.

  She was bent over the kabocha squash field, cutting the squat gray-green gourds from their stems, sunlight warming the back of her neck, when a woman’s voice sounded right behind her. Cam straightened and whirled, knife extended.

  “Hey, fazendeira. It’s me. Thought you might want some help for tomorrow.”

  “Jeez, Lucinda! You about gave me a heart attack.” Cam’s heart was, in fact, thumping in her throat. She took a deep breath.

  “Why are you so jumpy?”

  Cam shook her head. “No reason.”

  “I heard about Irene. Tough business, right? That why you’re nervous?” Lucinda shoved back her wild black curls and tied them into a knot as she trained her eyes on Cam.

  “It’s really tough. Did you hear about the—”

  “Pigs? Crazy bad. The poor lady. And Bobby on the lam. I bet he killed her.”

  “Of course he didn’t kill Irene! But where did you hear about it?”

  “Oh, you know. It’s all over Facebook, the noon news. If somebody didn’t hear, I would be surprised.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Pappas was here asking me all kinds of questions about last night. Hey, at least you didn’t argue with her in public. You and I are about the only ones who didn’t.”

  Lucinda began loading the cut gourds into the cart. “I guess I have to find a new housecleaning job. Too bad. Irene paid really well, and she never left a mess.”

  “Is it hard to find jobs?”

  “Can be. You know of anybody who needs a cleaning service?”

  “What about that lawyer, Susan Lee? I doubt she cleans her own house.”

  “I’ll call her. Good idea.” Lucinda drew her brows together. “Last week I heard Irene on the phone in her office while I was dusting the floorboards in the hallway. Half the time when I worked there, she wasn’t even home. But this time she was, and she sounded really unhappy with somebody. Not scared, but not her usual bossy self.”

  “Any idea who was on the other end of the call?”

  Lucinda shook her head. “I’ll keep thinking about it, though. Sometimes when I let a thought hang around the back of my mind for a while, it pops up to me later.”

  Cam nodded in agreement. She’d had the same experience. “If you think of it, you need to tell Pappas. Will you do that?”

  “I guess. He’s so not my favorite guy. Last June, when he arrested me and then gave up looking for the real killer? Not good.”

  “I know. But Irene’s killer shouldn’t be wandering around free, and he’s the detective on the case.”

  “Cart’s full,” Lucinda said. “You want me to take the gourds to the barn?”

  “We have to lay them out to cure. I set up a board on sawhorses outside the southern wall of the barn. Can you arrange them there?” As Lucinda headed away, hauling the loaded cart behind her, Cam added, “Meet you in the root field.”

  Cam trudged, pitchfork in hand, to the long beds where she’d planted beets, daikon, rutabaga, carrots, parsnips, and turnips. Some would stay in the ground for a couple of additional months, sweetenin
g up as the temperatures dropped. The parsnips she could leave in the ground to dulcify until well into winter, as long as she loosened the slender white taproot in its soil before the ground froze. The beet crop she was digging today had been an early planting, so the red orbs were fully mature.

  As she dug, she wondered if Lucinda would in fact tell Pappas if she could recall who Irene had been talking with that day. Or if the information would advance the case at all. Cam frowned. Irene had imported and exported textiles and woven rugs. She might have had all kinds of foreign enemies if she dealt with her suppliers and customers the same way she treated locals. The last thing sleepy Westbury needed was a shadowy Tunisian rug merchant or an angry Asian silk dealer coming halfway around the world to exact revenge on Irene.

  Cam tossed a handful of beets in a pile. Preston pounced out of nowhere, as if a beet had animated itself into a mouse.

  “Mr. P, you haven’t seen any mysterious foreigners around town, have you?” Cam snorted. An exotic stranger would be as easy to spot in this provincial town as a white Blankoma beet in a basket of Red Aces.

  By the time the sun approached the tall maples and birches at the back of Cam’s property, she and Lucinda had made a big dent in Cam’s harvest list.

  “I’ll do the rest in the morning. Thanks for your help.”

  Lucinda waved good-bye and drove off in her beat-up Civic.

  After Cam washed her hands in the kitchen, she surveyed her refrigerator and her erstwhile wine rack, which was a cardboard wine box on its side. A currently empty box. Food, she had—Jake had left her a container of leftovers from the dinner. All the wine had been finished off last night, and she and Sim had consumed the small amount of beer that had been left. She grabbed her keys and wallet and walked to her truck. Such delicious food really called out for a nice glass of wine to go with it.

  She left the Westbury Food Mart, wine, a six-pack of beer, and a few groceries in hand. A quarter mile later, a bad-sounding bumping started coming from the right front of the truck. She pulled over and got out to look. She swore at the half-flat tire. She knew her spare hung under the bed of the truck, but in the year since Great-Uncle Albert had given her the old Ford, she’d never had to use it. It was probably rusted in place. Dark was falling, and the temperature was, too. The last thing she wanted to do was crawl under the vehicle, free up the spare, and wrestle rusty lug nuts on the side of the road. If only this had happened at the Food Mart or in her driveway at the farm.

  She spied a sign for SK Foreign Auto two doors down. Sim’s auto shop. “Yes!” She pumped her fist in the air. Then worried the shop might have closed for the day. She climbed back into the cab and drove the limping truck into the lot in front of the small shop. Lights shone out like a welcome beacon.

  She slid her long legs out and moved toward the door. She halted. A panel van that had seen better days was parked in the dark on the side of the building. It looked a lot like the one Bobby Burr had driven to the farm most days over the summer. He had built shelves into the back of an old Ford Econoline to hold his carpentry supplies and tools. Cam thought about seeing if it was really his, but she had a flat tire to attend to first. She pulled open the door to the reception area. Sim stood, backlit, in the door to the garage bay and was speaking to someone Cam couldn’t see.

  “It’s a mess, all right,” she said before turning toward Cam. She shut the door to the garage quickly and folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes darted once to the door and back to Cam. “What do you need, Cam?”

  “I’m on my way home from the Food Mart, and I just got a really bad flat. But who were you just talking to?”

  “I was talking to myself. Spilled some oil in there.”

  “Oh. Anyway, would you help me change the tire?”

  Sim raised her right eyebrow. “I’d have bet you were good with mechanical stuff.”

  “I am, usually. It’s just that the spare is under the bed. It’s probably rusted in place given the condition of the rest of the truck.” She walked out to the truck. Sim followed.

  Cam gestured at several patches of rust on the sides near the wheel wells. “I don’t even know if I have a jack. It was my great-uncle’s truck. I’ve been driving it for only a year.”

  “No one should drive around without a jack.” Sim pursed her lips.

  Cam opened her mouth to speak, but Sim held up a hand.

  “Of course I’ll change it for you. Don’t worry. Can you hang on for a minute?”

  Sim disappeared back inside. The door clicked firmly behind her. Cam waited, hugging herself from the cold, wishing she’d grabbed a thicker sweater.

  Several minutes later one of the wide doors grumbled its way open, and Sim appeared in the opening. She told Cam to drive in and directed her onto the lift, which clanged twice as Cam’s wheels found their positions.

  “Emergency brake off. Leave it in neutral,” Sim called as she closed the wide door again. She sauntered to the back of the shop and flipped on a radio. Speakers on a shelf above it played the latest by the Black Keys.

  Cam climbed out and stood to the side. The space smelled of oil and rubber and dust.

  Sim checked a few things and pulled a lever at the side of the bay. The truck rose into the air with periodic clunks. She stopped it when the wheels were at her shoulder height, and began to remove the tire. She ducked underneath with a big wrench to whack the rusted part that secured the spare.

  “The van out there looks a lot like Bobby’s,” Cam said. “Did he show up earlier today? What was his reaction to Irene’s death?”

  “What van?” Sim kept working.

  “The Econoline. It’s right around the side of the building.”

  “It’s my cousin’s.” The wrench Sim held slipped and clattered on the cement floor. She swore, sucked on a scraped knuckle, picked it up again.

  “So you never got hold of Bobby?” Cam glanced at the door to the reception area. The glass in the top portion was dark. When had Sim turned off the light? It had been on when Cam arrived. Cam supposed she could have been Skyping with somebody. Cam used the free Internet service herself on occasion to communicate with her parents when they were overseas, which was almost always.

  Sim hauled the bad tire over to an air hose and filled it. She turned it, examining the worn black rubber all over. She straightened.

  “You need a new tire.” She checked the other three tires remaining on the truck. “Girlfriend, you won the lottery. You need a whole new set. Treads are way too smooth for safety.”

  Cam groaned. This was an expense she hadn’t planned for.

  “I’ll put the spare on for now, if it’s any good. You can think about the new set, but I wouldn’t wait too long. It’ll be snowing before you know it.” She gestured toward a grimy molded plastic chair that had started life white. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  It took Sim only a few minutes to add air to the spare, mount it, and lower the truck. After she tightened the final lug nut, she threw the bad wheel in the back of the truck. “It’s a full-size spare, so you’re okay to drive around town.” Sim wiped her hands on a red rag.

  “What do I owe you?”

  “Nothing.” Sim waved her off with a frown.

  “You sure?” Cam stood.

  Sim nodded.

  “Can I bring the truck in for an oil change on Monday?” Cam asked. “It’s overdue, and I don’t think I need to go anywhere that day.”

  Sim checked her smart phone and gave Cam the thumbs-up. She tapped in the appointment. “Have it here by eight, all right?”

  Cam agreed and thanked Sim, who raised the garage door and stepped outside. She directed Cam as she backed out. Sim waved and reentered the shop, lowering the door after her.

  Cam paused to glance at the side of the building. The van was gone.

  Chapter 5

  A glass of red wine accompanied Cam as she settled onto the old couch in her living room. Preston settled himself onto a pile of newspapers on the floor, crackling the p
aper as he got comfortable. The leftovers had been perfect.

  She pressed the TV remote and wandered through the channels, hoping for an old movie or maybe an interesting History Channel show. She passed the local news channel and then backed up. A senior reporter was interviewing Howard Fisher.

  “Tell us again what happened on your farm this morning, Mr. Fisher.” The slender woman, her silver-streaked hair perfectly arrayed around her face, held the microphone toward the farmer with a look that said she was listening only to him.

  Howard cleared his throat. “I was going out to feed them. The pigs. They eat a lot, you know. And I saw her. It was terrible.” The fingers on his right hand scrabbled nervously on his leg. He wore the same clothes Cam had always seen him in, but the contrast between his worn work outfit and the reporter’s stylish red jacket and slim black skirt made him look shabbier than usual.

  “Describe what you saw for us.” Her tone implied great drama.

  “Well, it was that Ms. Burr. She was lying in the sty, and the pigs was chewing on her legs. She’s always wearing those nice clothes, but she was muddy and . . .” He shuddered. “She was just plain dead, all right.”

  “Do you know how she got in there?”

  Howard shook his head several times. “No idea. She had no business there.”

  “Were you at a farm-to-table dinner last night?”

  “It was up to that Cam Flaherty’s farm. Attic Hill Farm, used to be called. Now she’s got some fancy new name for it.”

  Cam groaned. Drag her and her farm into it. The kind of publicity she didn’t need.

  “Produce Plus Plus Farm. Irene Burr was there, as well. Is that correct, sir? Did you speak to Ms. Burr there?”

  “Maybe.” Harold tossed his head. “They were cooking my pork at the dinner, so I went. Don’t like that kind of affair, generally.” He turned half away, seeming to listen to someone. He nodded as he faced the camera again. “That’s all I got to say.”

  The reporter thanked him and turned back to face to the camera. “As the authorities pursue persons of interest in the case, we’ll continue to follow these dramatic events, bringing you the latest news about tragic death in the sty.”