He was still looking hopeful twenty minutes later when the milk reached the correct temperature, and I added the vinegar. My eyes on the wall clock, I stirred slowly for two minutes, watching the curds form, then withdrew the spoon and covered the pot. Thirty minutes later, I came in from weeding the cucumbers and poured the contents of the pot into the colander. When the whey had drained, I gathered the curds in a tea towel and rinsed them well, massaging the contents before putting the cheese into a bowl and seasoning it with salt.
My worries temporarily replaced by the miracle of what I’d just done—I’d made cheese! From milk I’d milked myself!—I spooned up a bit of my creation.
It was absolute heaven.
Feeling a boost of excitement—this was something I knew my market clients would love, and it had taken no more than an hour to create—I covered the cheese with plastic wrap and tucked it into the refrigerator, then turned on the water to wash my hands. I had just reached for the dish towel when the phone rang.
“Hello?” I wedged the receiver between my shoulder and my chin and dried my hands on the towel.
It was Quinn. “Lucy, is Blossom in the pasture?”
I peered out the window, looking for Blossom’s familiar brown coat among the thistles. No sign of her.
“No,” I said. “How did you know?”
“Because she decided to take a stroll through downtown,” Quinn said.
“What?”
“In fact,” my friend continued, “she just finished off the second tub of geraniums in front of the courthouse.”
Sure enough, when I pulled up outside the courthouse a few minutes later, Blossom was ambling across the square. She dipped her head to take a mouthful of grass as I put the truck in park, and I cringed when I saw the tubs flanking the steps. This morning, they had been filled with bright red geraniums; now, they were empty, save for a few mangled stems.
I got out of the truck and took a few steps toward Blossom, who blinked at me with her long-lashed eyes and gamboled away toward the Red and White Grocery, where the last tents were being loaded into the back of a truck. My eyes strayed to where the jam tent had been; it was hard to imagine that just a few hours ago, Nettie Kocurek had died there. Except for a few overflowing trash barrels, almost everything had been cleaned up, and the sheriff’s car was long gone. Unfortunately, I was fairly sure I’d be seeing it again sometime soon.
“Lucy!” Quinn trotted over to me, her apron fluttering in the wind.
“Thanks for calling me,” I said. “I can’t believe she walked to town.”
“Too bad she missed the Founders’ Day Festival,” Quinn grinned.
“I wish I had, too,” I said, glancing at the courthouse and thinking of my conversation with Rooster Kocurek. I’d heard there were two jail cells up in the loft of the old building. And that one of them was haunted.
“Oh, I’m sure Rooster won’t go after you,” she said. She didn’t sound convinced, though.
“Yeah, right,” I said, turning my head to focus on Blossom, who was headed for the tomato seedlings arrayed outside the Red and White. “We need to get Blossom under control.”
“Sure,” she said. “But even if you do, how are you going to get her back to the farm?”
Both of us turned and looked at the truck. I had no cattle trailer, and there was no way I was driving back to the farm with Blossom in the truck bed. Even if by some miracle I got her up there, I was sure she’d be out by the time I got into the driver’s seat.
“What do I do? Walk her back?” I asked.
“Dr. Brandt has a trailer, and he’s only a few blocks away,” Quinn said. “I’ll run back to the Blue Onion and give him a call.”
She hurried back to the cafe while I took another tentative few steps toward Blossom, who I now realized wore no collar, halter, or any other thing that would enable me to grab her if I could catch her. I was definitely out of my depth.
The Jersey heifer had doubled back now and was sniffing at the statue of Krystof Baca. Before I could stop her, she wrapped her lips around the red-and-white lei Nettie Kocurek had draped around his neck and tugged it off.
It must not have been as tasty as the geraniums, though, because after a few experimental chews, she let the lei fall to the ground and began nuzzling Krystof’s left kneecap.
I shooed her away from the pickle-nosed statue, and she galloped across the green, crossing the very place where the jam tent had been. The structure, including the lines of tables inside, had been taken down, and there was no crime-scene tape guarding the area. The sight made me uneasy. I knew small-town sheriff’s departments weren’t used to solving murder cases, but if there was any forensic evidence that might help clear my name, it didn’t appear as if anyone had taken the time to gather it.
As Blossom dropped her head to crop some more grass, I found myself scanning the area. I could see by the trampled “U” of grass where the tables in the tent had been set up. I walked the area slowly, scanning the ground. There was a dark smudge on the grass along the side closest to the courthouse, and the grass in the area was flattened. Probably the EMTs and the sheriff’s deputies, I decided—which meant it was a long shot that there was anything left for me to find.
A smashed plastic cup lay on the ground, and a mustard-covered bratwurst wrapper had been trampled into the grass. Something sparkled in the light, a few feet away from where Nettie must have lain; it was a shattered jam jar, the dark preserves sticky and liquid in the late afternoon heat. I poked at it with my toe, turning it over, and caught my breath when I saw a fragment of a torn handmade label. The handwriting was mine.
Why was the jam jar broken? I wondered. Had she been using it to defend herself? If so, and she’d managed to cut her assailant, it was possible the DNA was on the glass. But would the police believe me if I told them? Or would they think I planted the evidence after the fact?
Frustrated, I glanced over at Blossom, who was still trimming the town green, and peered at the ground around the broken jam jar. I knew if I did find something, there had been so many people through the area that there was no way to associate it with the murderer, but I couldn’t help looking.
As I paced the area, eyes trained on the trampled ground, a scrap of red fabric caught my eye. I reached to touch it, but drew my hand back just in time; if it was evidence, I didn’t want to contaminate it with my fingerprints. A pin was stuck in it, in the shape of a gold lamb; it looked like it had been torn from a garment. The metal flashed in the afternoon light as I moved it with the toe of my shoe. Had Nettie torn it when her attacker stabbed her? Had she hit him—or her—with a jam jar and then grabbed at the murderer’s clothing in a vain attempt to save herself?
“Quinn,” I said when she trotted out to check on me a few minutes later, wiping her hands on her apron. “Look what I found.” I showed her what I had discovered—and told her my theory.
“How did Rooster miss all this?” she asked, looking down at the little gold pin embedded in its scrap of fabric.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Inexperience, probably. But if I walk in there and tell him about it, with my background, he’s either going to resent my sticking my nose into things or think I planted it.”
“If somebody doesn’t say something soon, though, it’s going to get cleaned up or lost,” she said.
“You know Rooster from high school,” I said. “Do you think you might be able to tell him?”
She gave a wry laugh. “Rooster hates me,” she said. “He’s not going to want to hear it from me that he might have missed some evidence.” She cocked a copper eyebrow. “Plus, I’m friends with you, so that’s two strikes against me.”
“What do I do, then? Leave it here?”
“I’ll tell him,” she said. “Somebody’s got to, and it’s better coming from me than you, I guess. You have Blossom under control?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to where she’d been cropping grass a few minutes ago. “Where’d she
go?”
“Looks like she’s headed for the tomato plants at the Enchanted Garden,” Quinn said.
I muttered a word I’d rather not repeat and hustled over just in time to place myself between Blossom and Mary Elizabeth Bedichek’s tender tomato transplants. She huffed and sauntered away, occupying herself with the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the pavement.
It was twenty minutes before Dr. Brandt arrived. Although Quinn had marched over to the sheriff’s office, I hadn’t seen her or Rooster Kocurek emerge. While keeping one eye on the station, I had managed to steer Blossom away from the Enchanted Garden’s tomato plant display, and also from the window boxes at the Country Place Hotel, but I was having difficulty keeping her away from the bushels of peaches in front of the Red and White. Todd Schmidt, who along with several other villagers, had joined me in the square, was attempting to catch her with a lasso he had fashioned out of twine when Dr. Brandt pulled up with the trailer on the back of his green pickup. As I watched, he backed it in beside the Red and White. Even Bessie Mae had decided Blossom was more interesting than the 4:50 freight train; she stood on the perimeter, watching with an uncharacteristic gleam in her sweet but vacant blue eyes.
Dr. Brandt unfolded his long, denim-clad legs from the cab of his truck and smiled at me, a twinkle in his brown eyes. “Hear you got yourself a runner.”
“I keep tryin’ to lasso her, but she’s quick!” Todd said, holding up his piece of twine. “Keeps trottin’ off every time I get near!”
“How did she end up in the square?” Dr. Brandt asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Quinn called me and said she was sampling the geraniums in front of the courthouse,” I added, nodding toward the empty tubs, “and I came straight down. I’ve kept her out of Mary Elizabeth’s tomato plants, and now all she wants is peaches.”
“Smart cow,” he said. “They look like they’re going to be good this year.”
I looked at the trailer, and then at Blossom, who was eyeing the fruit display avidly; evidently the geraniums hadn’t been particularly filling. Dr. Brandt wasn’t carrying a lasso or any other device for catching a wayward heifer. “How do we get her into the trailer?”
“Peaches, of course,” he said, opening the back of the trailer and reaching for a basket. “Step away for a little bit, please, folks,” he said. They did, forming something like a corridor. Blossom took a few nervous steps, and for a moment I was afraid she was going to take off and tackle the squash seedlings, but then Dr. Brandt made a soft “cush” sound and held out a peach. She calmed, her attention drawn first to the tall veterinarian, and then to the peach he held in his hand.
The square was silent except for the wind in the sycamore leaves and the sound of Dr. Brandt calling to Blossom. As if hypnotized, she stepped forward, first slowly, and then almost at a trot, as the veterinarian backed toward the trailer. At the base of the ramp, he fed her a peach, letting her take it from his open palm. She devoured it with a smacking sound and came up looking for more. He gave her one more and then stepped up onto the ramp. She balked at first, but he cushed a few more times, and before she knew it she was in the trailer with the doors closing behind her.
“Got a way with animals,” Todd said, the twine lasso dangling limply from his hand.
“Meet you back at Dewberry Farm?” Dr. Brandt said as he latched the doors.
“That would be wonderful,” I said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said with another one of those smiles. Despite my worry over Nettie’s death—and the fact that Quinn and Rooster still hadn’t emerged from the sheriff’s office—I felt the heat rising to my face as I smiled back. I hated to admit it, but I was starting to have a serious crush.
“Here’s your problem,” Dr. Brandt said, lifting a length of loose barbed wire from the tall grass at the edge of the pasture.
“How did she do that?” I asked, leaning against a fence post.
“It looks like she loosened it by rubbing against it,” he said, pointing at a tuft of brown fur mixed with a bit of sticky blood. “I’ll put some ointment on her cuts; looks like she’ll need it.”
“I’ll bet,” I said. “I hope it’s not too nasty.”
“I’m sure it’s just superficial,” he said. “But if we don’t fix this fence, those peaches don’t have a chance. Got a staple gun? I’ll put this back on the post for you.”
“Be right back,” I said, and hurried to the farmhouse to retrieve the gun. I confess I checked my hair and took two seconds to put on a fresh coat of lip gloss before hurrying back out, staple gun in hand.
Our fingers touched as I handed the staple gun to him, and I found myself savoring the warmth. He’d obviously had lots of experience with fences, as he fixed it in a matter of minutes, then handed the staple gun back to me. “It’s temporary, but it’ll do for now.”
“How did you learn to fix fences?” I asked.
“My grandparents had a farm in a town just west of here,” he said. “I spent summers with them, doing chores.”
“You too?” I asked. Although I had to admit my chores had largely involved sampling Grandma Vogel’s pies.
“That’s what got me interested in veterinary medicine,” he said. “I loved working with the animals. I always wanted to move to this part of the world; it’s a special place.” He gazed out at the rolling hills, the low sun gilding the bluebonnets and dappling the leaves of the oaks that marked the fence lines.
“Me too,” I said. “I just hope I’ll be able to stay.”
“You think Nettie’s heirs will continue with the drilling?” he asked.
“How do you know about that?” I asked, surprised.
He shrugged. “It’s a small town. People talk. And in my business, I don’t exactly live under a rock.”
“I guess not,” I said. “As for the drilling; we’ll see, I guess.”
Blossom, who was grazing not far from us, ambled over and poked at the fence, a hopeful look in her long-lashed eyes. “Not this time,” I chided her.
“Where’d you get her?” the handsome veterinarian asked, standing up and squinting at Blossom, who was now innocently cropping grass.
“Ed Zapp sold her to me, from the Double-Bar Ranch.”
“I thought she looked familiar,” he said. “That little spot on her left cheek, there.” He pointed to a dun spot just below her eye; I’d never noticed it. “This wouldn’t happen to be the cow formerly know as number eighty-two, would it?”
“Actually, yes,” I said, feeling a sense of foreboding. “Why?”
He chuckled. “You’re going to have your hands full, I’m afraid.”
“Uh-oh.” I knew I should have brought Quinn with me when I went to pick out a heifer. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s a fine cow,” he said. “Good milker.”
“But . . . ”
“Well, the truth is, she’s something of an escape artist. The hands used to call her Harriet Houdini. Probably why Ed was happy to sell her. She mowed down half of his lettuce field last fall, and then she got into his neighbor’s peach orchard and ate the bark off half the trees.”
I glanced back at my small orchard with trepidation. “Wonderful,” I said. So much for the idyllic farm life. Not only was I looking at having an oil well in the middle of my fields, but I had a renegade cow to make sure anything that did survive the drilling was consumed prior to harvest. Provided I didn’t get tossed in jail for killing the former owner with a bratwurst skewer, making the whole thing moot.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Everyone will recognize her, so she won’t be lost for long.”
His words did little to lift my spirits, but I smiled at him anyway, thinking that at least the company was nice—not to mention the view. “What do I owe you, Dr. Brandt?” I asked. “You’ve been a lifesaver today.”
“Just a glass of iced tea will do,” he said, matching my smile with a lopsided grin of his own. He had a small dim
ple in his cheek and a knowing glint in his eyes that made my heart skip a beat.
“Seriously. I owe you much more than that.”
“You’ve got plenty enough on your hands at the moment. You can bring me a peach pie sometime,” he said, brushing the dust off his jeans. “And call me Tobias. The doctor thing gives me hives.”
Tobias, I repeated in my head. “Only if you’ll call me Lucy,” I said.
“Now, how about that iced tea?” he asked, giving me a slow smile that made the heat rise to my face.
Unfortunately, at that moment, a rumble of an engine intruded. My stomach sank when I recognized the black and white of Sheriff Kocurek’s car.
“Looks like trouble,” Tobias said quietly.
“I think he thinks I stabbed Nettie Kocurek with a bratwurst skewer,” I said.
Tobias looked at me levelly. “Well, did you?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
“Then you should have nothing to worry about,” he said in a calm voice. “The physical evidence won’t back it up. Besides, weren’t you with Quinn all day?”
“Most of the time, anyway,” I said. “Actually, maybe this is good news. We found a couple of things near the scene of the crime; when we left town, Quinn was in the station letting him know what we’d found.”
“See? I’m sure you’re fine.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said, feeling my chest tighten in the beginnings of an asthma attack, which sometimes happened when stress hit. I’d been remarkably asthma-free since moving to Buttercup, but the way the week was going, something told me it might be wise to keep my inhaler on hand for a while. “I guess we should head back to the house,” I said, watching the cruiser advance up the driveway, a cloud of dust like a storm in its wake.
“Let me put that ointment on Blossom and I’ll be right up,” he said. Then he raised an eyebrow. “Unless another time would be better?”
“No,” I said quickly, thinking it would be comforting to have someone on the property besides Chuck who thought I was innocent. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Killer Jam (A Dewberry Farm Mystery) Page 5