“What?” Cam cocked her head and frowned as she smiled.
“Means ‘Bless you’ in Greek.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.” Cam sniffed. “I’m allergic to grass. And I’m a farmer. Go figure.”
He cleared his throat. “You know this is not strictly kosher, me talking about the case with you.”
“Because I’m a suspect?” Cam clasped her hands behind her back.
“I have ruled you out as even a person of interest.” He glanced over at her. “It’s not an insult, mind you. It’s a technical term. Seriously, I can’t see why you would want to murder someone who had to be one of your richest customers, even if she was a little prickly. No, talking through a case with a civilian is not the way we’re trained to operate. But I figure you circulate among these people in a way I never could. I feel sure there are things you’ve heard or seen that might help me find the murderer.”
“I don’t know. I’ll do my best. Let me start by telling you about Preston.”
Cam spent a few minutes catching Pete up on Preston going missing and on finding him at Howard Fisher’s. She told him about confronting Howard and Howard’s anger.
“You shouldn’t have gone there alone.” Pete looked at her with worry etched all over his face.
“I didn’t. Lucinda was with me. And I was glad she was.” She went on to describe her meeting Vince after school a little while earlier. “He seemed to think his dad took Preston so he could give him back. When the time was right. I don’t really get it.”
“It’s information. It might connect later.”
“Poor kid. Said his dad beats him, which was why he was afraid to tell me the truth about Preston.”
Pete shook his head. “I wonder if the school knows, if anyone has notified social services.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll make a note to check into it. Now, do you think Howard had any reason to kill Irene?”
“I don’t know. Lucinda said she saw his truck driving away from Irene’s one time.” At Pete’s quizzical look, Cam went on. “Lucinda cleaned house for her.”
“Interesting.”
“She was supposed to call you and tell you. Did she?”
He shook his head.
“I heard something else about Howard from my great-uncle,” Cam said. “He told me Howard’s business is in jeopardy, that he might lose the farm.”
“I wonder if it’s true.”
“I asked Howard, and he said he isn’t losing the farm. He wasn’t too happy about my asking, either.”
Pete stopped in his tracks and pointed to a large bird swooping over the open field. “Marsh hawk. See the white tail patch? And how it tilts back and forth as it swoops?”
“Cool,” Cam said as she watched the hawk. “I don’t know much about bird watching.”
“But you do know something about Sim Koyama.” He resumed walking, as did Cam. “She seems to be a bit unstable this week.”
“I only met her for the first time at the dinner, you know. She and Bobby are good friends, and she’s worried about him. That’s what she says, anyway.” They followed the path into the trees as it wound uphill over roots and between large rocks.
“She was seen disagreeing with Irene Burr several times,” Pete said. “Rather vociferous disagreements, I might add.”
“I guess she might have killed Irene.” Cam turned up her right palm. “But why? I mean, we all have people we don’t get along with, right?”
“Maybe she’s convinced of Bobby’s innocence because she’s the murderer.”
“I don’t think so. But tell me more about Bobby. He came by the other day and said he’d been released but that he’s still a person of interest.”
“We have a reliable witness who places him at the pigsty.”
“So what if he was there? Maybe he argued with Irene, and she fell in by accident.”
“Why wouldn’t he call for help, then? And it wasn’t an accident. She was hit on the head before she died. And it wasn’t from the fence.”
Cam shuddered. “Is there any other evidence against Bobby? Don’t you have to have DNA and fingerprints and everything?”
“Leave the CSI to us, Cam.” Pete cleared his throat again. “You’re right, though. We didn’t have enough to arrest him. Yet. It’s the reason we had to let him go. But we’re working on it. And speaking of working, I was thinking about that note you said you found and lost.”
“I told you—”
“I know. I’m afraid I didn’t take it seriously. I’m sorry. Can you remember what it said?”
“Something about ‘or I’ll tell what I know.’ ”
“Interesting. I hope it turns up soon.”
They had been strolling in single file. He put a hand on her shoulder for a moment and caught up with her, and they continued side by side.
Picturing the pigsty and its malnourished residents, she shuffled through the leaves on the path. Her toe caught in a hidden root, and she launched forward.
“Whoa!” Pete snapped his arms around her waist right before her knee hit the ground. He pulled her back up.
Cam found herself standing with her back to Pete. His arms encircled her waist with a light touch, and his face warmed her left cheek.
“Gotta watch your step, Flaherty,” he murmured.
Cam didn’t move. It felt so comfortable, so right, for his arms to be around her. And Pete calling her by her last name was far more intimate than when he’d first addressed her as Cam.
A rasping blue jay flew at an angle directly in front of them and broke the moment. Cam opened Pete’s arms and twisted away to face him.
“Thanks for the rescue.” She tried to smile through the power of the moment.
Pete looked at her face and closed his eyes for a moment. He reopened them. “Right, where were we? What else do you know?” He resumed walking without meeting Cam’s eyes. “Have you seen anybody acting oddly? It could be anyone, anywhere.”
“Do you know Wes Ames?” Cam asked, wondering if she’d ever regard Pete as only a friend and colleague after today.
“I remember he’s a customer of yours. Petite, friendly wife?”
“Right, except she’s out of town for a few weeks. Wes seems . . . I don’t know . . . off somehow. And he was arguing with Irene the night of the dinner.”
“I heard. About the fate of the Old Town Hall, right?”
“Speaking of which.” Cam went on to describe her encounter with Wes at the Old Town Hall. “He was jumpy and kind of angry. I’d never seen him like that before.”
Pete walked in silence for a minute. “Do you happen to have a customer named Diane?”
“I do.” Cam didn’t even try to hide her surprise at the question and the sudden change of subject. “Why? Do you think she killed Irene?”
“No.” Pete laughed. “I don’t. Her name came across my desk recently, and I wondered.”
Cam stared at him. Not only for the sound of his deep, throaty laugh, which she was pretty sure she’d never heard before, but at the prospect of Diane having anything to do with illegal activities.
“She seems like a perfectly upstanding citizen to me,” Cam said. “Her check for her share didn’t bounce, she volunteers on the farm, and she cans her own tomatoes. She’s a consultant of some kind with a flexible schedule. I don’t really know anything else about her.”
Pete made a halting gesture with his hand. “That’s plenty. Thanks.” A little smile stayed on his face as they walked, though.
Cam shook her head in confusion but decided it would be better to watch where she walked than to quiz Pete about Diane and risk tripping again. She wasn’t sure she could handle another rescue today.
Chapter 33
Cam sat in a lawn chair in a last spot of late-day sunshine outside the chicken enclosure. Preston sat next to her, doing his Sphinx imitation. During the rest of her walk with Pete, they had chatted about non-murder-related topics—movies they liked, his three brothers, her quirky
parents, how they’d gotten into their respective professions. They’d kept it light and easy. When they’d parted in the parking area, he said to call him if she learned anything new, and made her promise to be careful.
It had been a pleasant afternoon. The part where she tripped had been particularly nice. But Cam reminded herself of two red-flag points. The first was that she had a date with Jake on Monday night. The second was that Pete was a man on the rebound and he was not yet divorced. It didn’t matter how much she liked that he didn’t whine about his situation and didn’t dwell on it. It was irrelevant at this time to feel a strong attraction to him both physically and intellectually. She needed to be content to be friends with him and to help him on the investigation if she could.
“Hey, Cam!” Ellie’s voice intruded on her thoughts.
Cam turned to look behind her. The teenager rode around the corner of the barn on a bicycle. She was breathing heavily, her cheeks rosy, a smile splitting her face. She pulled to a stop next to Cam’s chair, unclipped the helmet strap under her chin, and hung the helmet on the handlebar.
Cam greeted her. “You look happy.”
“I got my Locavore badge! I wanted to show you.” Ellie dismounted, letting the bike fall to the side. She wore a gray hooded sweatshirt with a yellow GS emblem on the left chest. What looked like a pre-distressed numeral twelve decorated the front of the hoodie, with a small nineteen embedded in the top of the one. The right leg of her skinny jeans was rolled up at the ankle, above a leopard-print sneaker with neon-green laces.
“Congratulations, Ellie. You worked hard for it.”
“We had our troop meeting after school today. I, like, finished the requirements in the summer, but it took this long for the badge to come through.” She rolled her eyes as she dug something out of her pocket. She proffered a plastic sheath holding a colorful cloth patch bordered in orange. “Do you think it’s a radish or a beet?” The reddish orb had its aboveground greenery attached.
“Good question.” Cam peered at the leaves. “I think it’s a beet. A radish would have a lighter-colored root and would taper into it more.”
“I think you’re right.”
“Grab a chair. Unless you have to get home?”
“No. I told my mom I was coming by here. What a killer hill you live on, Cam. This is the first time I’ve ridden my bike all the way up here.”
Cam laughed. “Where’s an attic? At the top of the house. And this is Attic Hill.”
“How are the hens doing?” Ellie knelt by the fence and stuck her finger through one of the openings. Hillary marched over to check out if food might be part of the deal. When she pecked at Ellie’s finger, the girl laughed and withdrew it.
“Her name is Hillary,” Cam said.
Ellie stared at Cam. “Do you mean for Hillary Clinton? Awesome. My mom worked on her campaign for president.”
Cam knew Myrna Kosloski suffered from multiple sclerosis. Being wheelchair bound didn’t let her get out much. But she wasn’t surprised the former surgeon had been active in a political campaign for a strong female candidate, and there was a lot a person could do from a desk and a phone.
“Omigod.” Ellie giggled. “She’s the hens’ fearless leader, right? That is so the right name.”
“I thought so, too. I hadn’t realized they were going to have personalities. So how’s high school treating you?” Cam hadn’t had a chance to chat with Ellie since the summer ended.
“Some good, some bad. It was pretty confusing at first. Lockers, seniors. You know. But I’m in advanced math, and I made the cross-country team, which is a bunch of fun kids.”
“Aren’t you on the soccer team, too?”
“That’s the traveling team. It’s with the town, not the school, and it’s only on weekends. Well, we’re supposed to practice every Tuesday. But Coach Molise doesn’t like it when I miss cross-country practice. I guess this’ll be my last year playing soccer. But it’s okay. I love running.”
“I’ll bet you’re fast.” Cam had noticed most of Ellie’s recent growth seemed to be in her legs, which looked longer every week.
“I’m trying to talk up Girl Scouts at school, too. Make it cool, instead of nerdy. I brought a couple of new girls to the meeting today. I think they’re going to join.”
“Would that be a Girl Scout sweatshirt you’re wearing?”
“Totally. See?” She pointed to the small nineteen and the big twelve. “Founded in nineteen twelve. Not a bad design for a nerdy group, right?”
“I like it. So, any boys on the horizon at school?”
“Chill, Cam!” Ellie refastened her fine blond hair in a scrunchie. “Well, there is one kid I kind of like. He’s a junior, so he’s wicked old. But he’s nice. And he doesn’t try to, like, play Mr. Big Man or anything.”
“Name?”
“Vince. His dad is the pig farmer who was at the dinner last week. You know, their farm is where Ms. Burr died. Poor Vince.”
Cam watched Ellie stroke Preston. She had a crush on Vince Fisher.
“Do you ever go to see him at the farm?” This could be worrisome. She didn’t want Ellie anywhere near Howard’s temper.
“Uh, no.” Ellie stretched the negation into three syllables while she wrinkled her brow and raised her eyebrows as only a teen could. “We just, like, get an ice cream after school and talk. Once we rode our bikes to Mill Pond and walked around.”
Cam had had no idea Mill Pond was date central for old and young and everyone in between. The spot of sun they sat in suddenly turned to shadow as the sun sank behind the woods beyond the farm.
Ellie stood. “I have to get home. See you tomorrow. I’ll come early to help, right?”
“I’d love it. Thanks, Ellie. And congratulations again on your badge. You’re great.”
Ellie fastened her helmet and rode off with a wave.
Cam shoved herself up out of the chair and shooed all the hens into their coop. Sunset ate away at the light earlier each day. In a couple of weeks the clocks would change, and they would plunge into the short, dark days of a northern fall. She wondered if the chickens’ internal clocks were linked to the actual sunset or to the same time every day. She guessed she’d find out.
She made sure the coop door was securely fastened and puttered in the barn for a while, setting up the farm table for the next day’s distribution, assessing what still needed to be harvested, putting away tools.
She felt unsettled as she walked to the house. The dusk gathered like a dark dream. While it was great to see Ellie learning, growing, falling in love, even, it made Cam feel all the older. This life she’d taken on, running a farm solo, was a hard one. It was not so different from any other farmer’s the world over, but it varied in every respect from her previous safe, sedentary job as a software engineer with a condo in the city and clean fingernails around the clock.
As Cam unlocked the door to the house, she wondered if she’d ever have a teenaged daughter like Ellie. Was she even cut out to be a mother? Cam’s own mother was sweet but had been as distant as her father. Her only real role model for maternal nurturing had been Great-Aunt Marie. And what man would want a socially unskilled woman like herself? Jake appeared to, but Cam wasn’t sure she wanted him in return. Pete? Maybe, but they would have to get to know each other much better, and he had a few details of his own to work out first.
Cam flicked on the lights and called Preston. When he ran in, she relaxed into relief from tension she hadn’t realized she was holding. She locked the door behind them.
She pushed back her chair two hours later. She’d cut an acorn squash in half and baked it. She had thrown together a quick whole-wheat couscous stuffing with sautéed onions and chopped steamed kale, rosemary, and pine nuts, and had filled the scooped-out halves, topping them with grated sharp cheddar. A few more minutes in the oven, time enough to pour a glass of wine, and it was dinner, with enough left over for several more solitary meals.
She was halfway through both her dinner and
reading the Boston Globe when the house phone rang.
She greeted Great-Uncle Albert.
“I wanted to tell you I got a ride over to Bev Montgomery’s today,” he said. “We had a long talk, and I think she’s agreed to sell the place. A lady here passed recently, so her room is available.” He laughed. “Death is the only way rooms come open, I’m afraid. At any rate, Bev said she’d take it.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” And maybe in assisted living Bev would also get some of the mental health attention she needed.
“Say, did Preston ever turn up?” Albert asked.
“He’s back.”
“Wonderful, dear.”
“I forgot to tell you last night. I’m sorry. And you might not think it’s so wonderful when you hear where I found him.” She relayed the story of the previous morning.
“Oh, my. Why would Howard keep Preston?”
“Vince said something about his father wanting to wait to give him back so it would look like he had rescued Preston instead of taking him.”
“The whole thing is a shame. Howard Fisher has had his troubles, I must say.”
“He seems to be passing them on to his son, unfortunately. I spoke with Vince after he got out of school yesterday. He said his father beats him regularly.”
“That’s a crime. Has somebody reported him?”
“Detective Pappas said he’d look into it.”
After they’d finished talking, she thought a little harder about why Howard would want to play the nice guy by pretending to find Preston after having kept him nearly starved for a few days. Because he thought Cam was being overly critical of the way he tended his pigs? Or that she was suspicious of him? For what? The murder?
She shook her head. She returned to her dinner and her paper. Maybe she’d call Pete to talk some more when she was done eating. Maybe he was sitting home alone on a Friday night, too.
Chapter 34
She awoke the next morning with a fleeting dream memory of her feet traversing a frozen lake. When she opened her eyes, the gray light and the sound of dripping eaves through the open window played backdrop to her bare feet outside the covers. Cam groaned as she grabbed for the quilt, curled her feet and head under it, and prayed without hope to get back to sleep. She lay listening to the rain as her feet gradually warmed. She never did call Pete last night. It would have seemed too personal. She didn’t really have anything pressing on the case to talk with him about, after all.
Til Dirt Do Us Part (A Local Foods Mystery) Page 20