Going Organic Can Kill You

by McLaughlin, Staci

  “How do you hypnotize a pig?” I whispered back.

  Zennia ran a hand along Wilbur’s side. “You must look at the pig to find his inner soul, what makes him tick. Then you can communicate with the pig.”

  When I looked at a pig, all I saw was bacon, but I kept that to myself.

  A puff of breath sounded behind me and Esther came in from the hall. “Oh, goodness gracious, Zennia, you’ve done it again,” she whispered. “You are a genius with the animals.”

  With a slight groan, Zennia rose to her feet, her long crinkled skirt swishing around her legs as she moved. “He should be a doll now. If you’ll get something to carry him in, Esther, I’ll help load him. He’s young, but too big for you to handle on your own.”

  “Be right back.” Esther darted toward the other side of the lobby.

  Zennia headed toward the kitchen and I gestured at the pig, which now appeared to be napping. “Is he okay to leave like that?”

  “He’s in a trance. Once he’s back with the other pigs, he’ll snap back to normal, but for now, we can leave him in the lobby.”

  I glanced around for any sign of Gordon, crossing my fingers that he wouldn’t get wind of the pig on the floor before Esther could return. Somehow I doubted he’d be okay with the arrangement.

  “Wilbur seems happy here on the farm,” I commented as we emerged into the kitchen.

  Zennia rinsed her hands under the faucet. “Nonsense. Animals need to roam free, not be penned for the amusement of the guests.”

  “Wilbur wouldn’t stand a chance in the wild. A coyote would eat him the first day.” I had no idea if coyotes ate pigs, but it sounded like a good argument.

  Zennia harrumphed and dumped a pile of green beans on a plate.

  Esther came into the kitchen, pushing an empty bellhop cart. Zennia looked at her pile of beans, sighed, and followed Esther as she went to pick up Wilbur. I trailed along, curious to see how they’d get the pig on the cart.

  Back in the lobby, Esther tilted the cart on its side next to Wilbur, leaning the top bar against the wall. She seized his front legs while Zennia took hold of his hind legs. With a mighty heave, they lifted part of Wilbur off the floor and shifted him toward the cart. His midsection seemed to catch on the lip, so I leaned down and gave him a shove, flinching at the squishiness of his belly under the rough skin. With Zennia holding the frame on one side, Esther grabbed the other and tilted the cart upright, Wilbur sliding into the middle without a single grunt. I wondered if Zennia had slipped Wilbur one of her herbal concoctions, rather than merely hypnotized him. That was one zonked-out pig.

  Esther released the cart to wipe a hand across her brow. “Whew. Glad that’s done.” She placed both hands on the metal frame and pushed the cart out the front door. I watched as she made her way past the side windows toward the back of the house.

  I briefly wondered if I should have escorted her. Surely she’d be fine now. I went into the kitchen, washed my hands, and poked around in the fridge, sliding the packages of tofu and edamame to the side in hopes of finding something fattening and unhealthy. But only more tofu and a variety of vegetables stared back at me. I shut the fridge door.

  Zennia tossed mystery ingredients in a bowl, prepping for lunch. Time for me to work on those brochures in the office. I’d gone three feet when I heard my name.

  Esther stood at the open back door, her pants and shoes splattered with mud, her hands completely encased in brown goo.

  “Esther, what happened?” I asked.

  “Wilbur was madder than a wet hen once I got him back to the pen. He put up quite the fight.” She glanced down at her clothes, her hands held out as if in surrender. “I’m afraid I lost the battle.”

  Oops. Guess I should have gone with her after all.

  Zennia set down her bowl and handed Esther the towel hanging off the oven handle.

  “Best get cleaned up. Lunch is served in five minutes and I barely have time to finish the quinoa and mango dish as it is.” Tiny round bits, what I could only assume was the quinoa, covered her apron. Zennia swiped at the black strands of hair that had come loose from her braid and turned back to the bowl on the counter.

  Esther gasped. “Five minutes? What am I going to do?” She turned pleading eyes on me. “Dana? I hate to be a bother again, but any chance you could serve lunch? I can’t get washed up that fast and we can’t keep the guests waiting.”

  “Of course Dana will help,” Gordon said, walking into the kitchen from the hall and making me jump. The guy needed to wear a bell.

  I had been on the verge of agreeing to help Esther but now I paused. Gordon would automatically assume I was helping because he’d given the orders. Couldn’t allow that.

  “Gee, Esther, I have an awful lot of my own work to finish up. Gordon, you could serve lunch.” Judging by the glower on Gordon’s face, he wouldn’t be helping.

  “Not possible,” he said, raising his clipboard and waving it at me as if that explained everything. “My work for this opening weekend is too important for me to waste time waiting tables.”

  And my work wasn’t? Esther watched our little exchange, her hands still held far away from her sides, like a brown pelican in flight. I glanced out the window and saw a few guests drifting toward the dining area. With only fourteen guests, serving wouldn’t take long. And I couldn’t abandon Esther just to spite Gordon.

  “What goes out first?” I asked Esther.

  She let out the breath she’d been holding and looked at Zennia.

  “We’ll start with the potato and green bean salad,” Zennia said, gesturing to the small plates at the end of the counter. “Then we’ll serve the vegan fish sticks with the quinoa.”

  I looked at a plate of potatoes and green beans tossed with diced celery and green onion. Zennia had been using Esther and me as guinea pigs all week while she tried out recipes to serve the guests. This plate was the most normal thing she’d made to date.

  “At least it has mayonnaise in it,” I mumbled under my breath.

  “Of course,” Zennia said. Guess she didn’t need her hearing checked. “It’s my own recipe with silken tofu and mustard. Much less saturated fat than those store-bought jars.”

  I made a face at the plate, then chided myself for being such a food snob. Maybe the tofu mayo was delicious. If nothing else, I’d drop a few pounds while I was working at the farm.

  I lifted the first two plates, balancing one on my forearm and picking up a third, and headed back down the main hall. I hung a left into the dining room. Eight round tables covered in cream tablecloths filled the space, a narrow vase of daisies sitting in the middle of each. Framed photographs of the farm and Blossom Valley from fifty years ago hung on walls recently painted sky blue. Esther had told me she wanted the guests to feel like they were still outside as they sat down to dine. At the back of the room, French doors led to the picnic tables on the larger of the two patios.

  After several trips back and forth, I paused to assess. Three people were actually eating the vegan fish sticks, while everyone else poked at their food with a fork or shoved the slimy-looking quinoa around on the plate to cover the sticks. Based on the fishy smell rising up from the food, I didn’t blame them. Zennia had explained this morning how she used kelp granules in the breading to give the fake fish sticks their taste. I’d have to dig around in the pantry for something edible when I took my lunch break, since I already knew the fridge was a loss.

  While I was trying to recall if Zennia at least kept crackers in the kitchen, Sheila burst into the room.

  “Did I miss lunch? I lost track of time.” She sank into a chair at the nearest empty table. She’d changed out of her yoga attire and into a floor-length sundress with a chunky necklace and matching bracelet.

  “I’ll get your salad,” I said, walking out the door.

  By the time I returned, Sheila had placed her napkin in her lap and was holding a fork. She must have worked up quite an appetite at yoga.

  I set a plate of po
tato and green bean salad in front of her, then looked around the room. All the guests were accounted for except Maxwell. Was his absence due to his dissatisfaction with the food or embarrassment over his little yoga spill?

  I wandered over to his assistant, Logan Manchester. In his late twenties with brown hair styled like Justin Bieber, he texted on his BlackBerry. His fish sticks and quinoa lay untouched.

  “Any idea if your boss is having lunch today?”

  Logan kept his eyes on the PDA screen. “I report to him. He doesn’t report to me.”

  Yikes. Perhaps I should call Logan’s mother and tell her she’d raised a rude little boy.

  “We can hold an extra plate if he’ll be eating here,” I said.

  Logan sighed and looked up. Dark circles underscored his brown eyes, all the more pronounced against his pale complexion.

  “If you wouldn’t mind. God knows I don’t want to be the one to tell Maxwell that he missed lunch.” He reached into his man bag and extracted a sterling silver fork and knife. He set these at the place across from him, then pulled out a bottle of Evian water. He caught sight of my raised eyebrows. “Maxwell is very particular.”

  “I’ll be sure to place his fish sticks in a tidy row.” I straightened a daisy that had fallen over in the vase and propped it against the others. “How long have you worked for him?”

  “Six months.” He raised his head a little higher. “I got hired as his assistant’s assistant and Maxwell promoted me when that guy left. I’ve lasted longer than anyone.”

  At six months? I wondered if Maxwell fired all the others, or they fled screaming from his particularities.

  “Congratulations.” I noticed some diners were leaving already, no doubt frightened off by the food. “Do you think he’ll be along soon? I need to clear the other tables.”

  Logan shrugged. “He may have gotten a call. He’s an important producer in Hollywood, you know.”

  Over half the guests were related to the film somehow, but everyone’s exact identity and affiliation to the movie was a bit hazy in my mind. “Famous producers still need to eat.”

  I moved to the neighboring table and picked up a plate. Whoever had been eating here had made it through half the sticks before giving up. I tried not to breathe as I lifted the plate, lest I catch a whiff of kelp granules. “I’ll keep an eye out for him while I clean up.”

  Logan was already back to reading his e-mail. “Thanks. He told me to be here at noon, sharp, so I’m sure he’ll show up eventually.”

  I finished clearing the rest of the plates, then left Logan alone in the dining room, Maxwell a no-show. Zennia was not in the kitchen when I dropped off the plates, so I searched the pantry and snagged a box of wheat crackers, a step up from those fish sticks. I retreated across the hall to the office, nibbling a cracker, and booted up the computer.

  I’d finished the bulk of the work for my marketing contract but had two more brochures to complete. I blocked my mind from thinking about what I’d do when the job wrapped up. It’d taken me almost a year to get this contract after the start-up I’d been working for in San Jose shut down due to lack of venture capital funds. I didn’t relish the idea of starting over. Again. Especially in a town like Blossom Valley, where jobs were few and far between. But I’d made the decision to return home after my father’s death from a heart attack, and I had to make it work. For my mom’s sake as well as my own.

  After the computer finished warming up, I checked my e-mail, felt a pang of loneliness when I saw my empty inbox, then opened InDesign. I brought up the brochure file as the maid, Heather Koubek, walked in, slightly out of breath. Her brown hair was swept up in an untidy bun, exposing a long scar on the side of her neck. Without her usual wedge shoes, she was under five feet, her thin body dressed in cut-off jeans and a white T-shirt, a hole along the bottom hem.

  “Dana, Esther mentioned how you served lunch for Zennia.” Her tongue ring flashed in the light as she spoke. “I was hoping you’d help me with the rooms.”

  What was that phrase Mom was always spouting off? No good deed goes unpunished?

  “I don’t know the first thing about housekeeping. I can barely keep my own room straightened.”

  Heather touched her jeans pocket; the outline of the object inside reminded me of a cigarette lighter. “You wouldn’t need to clean anything. I did all the rooms this morning, but I was having trouble with the dryer and couldn’t finish the towels in time. You’d only need to pick up the dirty towels and drop off the clean ones.”

  Didn’t sound too hard. “And what will you be doing?”

  Heather’s face went blank. “Sorry?”

  “You said you were too busy, and I was wondering what you’ll be doing while I replace the towels.”

  Heather fingered the hole in her shirt. “Well, I, um, have so much, lots of different, um, things.”

  Well that was nice and specific. I looked at the computer screen and half-finished document.

  “You could change the towels when you get back,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t want to risk having a guest get mad about dirty towels. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” She tossed the passkey at me and I automatically caught it.

  Before I could protest, she’d backed out the door and disappeared.

  I stared at the empty doorway, wondering what she was hiding. A secret rendezvous with a boyfriend? A sudden aversion to dryer fluff?

  I heaved myself out of the desk chair and headed for the laundry room. I studied the old washer and dryer, relics from the seventies. If Esther was going to make this farm a success, she’d have to upgrade her laundry unit. The dryer alone was a huge energy hog. But I knew she’d sunk her entire savings into building the cabins and renovating the public portion of the house. After a few booked weekends and the revenue that would come with them, she could focus on the behind-the-scenes maintenance.

  The clean white towels were stacked neatly on a shelf, a maid’s cart with a rolling hamper parked nearby. I placed the towels on the cart and pushed the cart out the door. When the wheels hit the sash, the cart wobbled and threatened to topple. The bright white towels cascaded to the floor. I muttered under my breath, refolded and restacked the towels, then placed one hand on top to avoid a repeat performance.

  I wheeled the cart out the door and down the path toward the cabins. I passed the pool area where Tiffany lounged in a deck chair in the world’s tiniest red bikini, a butterfly tattoo appearing to flutter on her right thigh as she rocked her leg back and forth. Christian was now leading two guests in Pilates, but he glanced at Tiffany every few seconds. Esther had mentioned a “No Fraternizing with Guests” policy, but the sight of Tiffany’s tattoo had apparently erased that discussion from Christian’s memory.

  Oh, well, not my problem.

  Past the pool, the cabins waited. The walls of each cabin touched its neighbor, giving the appearance of one long building, the rough-hewn wood giving the place a rustic air. Each cabin had a square window that faced the pool, the water reflected in the panes.

  I slowed the cart and stopped at the first cabin. What exactly was the procedure here? While I’d received plenty of clean towels in my time, I’d never delivered them. Should I knock? Listen at the door for any sounds?

  I knocked, waited thirty seconds, then yelled, “Hello? I have towels.” No response. I let myself in with the passkey.

  The room was devoid of personal items, making me wonder for a moment if the cabin was vacant. I was sure Esther had sold out for the big weekend. I spotted a zipped-up suitcase in the corner and decided this client must be one of those people who didn’t unpack when they went on vacation.

  I looked at the towels in my hand, then at the lonely room. I couldn’t leave it so empty. Spreading out a bath towel on the bed, I rolled up both sides, then curved one end to create a neck, recalling the trick I’d learned when my parents dragged me to a towel origami class on our one and only cruise a few summers ago. I quickly made a matching shape and set them
on the bed, two swans facing one another, their necks and heads forming a heart. Let’s hope the occupant wasn’t on a solo retreat to recover from a failed relationship. That could be awkward.

  I headed for the next room. Again, no one was home, but this time it was evident someone was staying here. Stockings and shoes were strewn across the floor. A Hollywood rag I didn’t recognize was spread over the coffee table, Brangelina staring back at me from the page. The bathroom counter was covered in make-up jars and tubes. I wasn’t even sure what some of the products were for. Based on the shiny gold minidress laid out on the bed, I guessed this was Tiffany’s room. If she wore the dress to dinner, it would at least distract everyone from whatever invention Zennia was whipping up. I changed the towels and left.

  Next door, costume jewelry was scattered across the coffee table, large colored beads and plastic crystals lying loose among other pieces. A catalog lay at the end. On the nightstand, a jewelry case sat alone, its velvet exterior proclaiming its value. I glanced over my shoulder, though I knew I was alone in the room, and cracked the case open.

  I gasped.

  A ruby and diamond necklace was nestled on a satiny pillow. I snapped the box closed and let go of it like the fire in the diamonds was burning my hands. Who would leave such a valuable-looking piece lying around in their room? That necklace belonged in a safe. I swapped out the towels and hurried out, feeling guilty, and all I’d stolen was a peek.

  The next room held a case of Evian water, a bag of silverware, three new packages of boxer briefs, and a laptop computer. The open closet door revealed starched white dress shirts and khaki slacks. Logan, Maxwell’s assistant, must be staying here.

  Three rooms down, seven to go.

  I wheeled the cart down to the next room and stopped. After my usual knock and thirty-second wait, I tried the knob. The door was closed but not latched. Had someone not latched the door on their way in or out? I knocked again, this time a little softer, listening for any sound. Nothing.

  I pushed the door open and stuck my head in. Down the short hall, a pair of feet hung off the edge of the bed. I promptly withdrew.