Wicked Harvest

by Karen MacInerney

  Wicked Harvest

  A Dewberry Farm Mystery

  Karen MacInerney

  Copyright © 2019 by Karen MacInerney

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Books in the Dewberry Farm Mystery Series

  Killer Jam

  Fatal Frost

  Deadly Brew

  Mistletoe Murder

  Dyeing Season

  Wicked Harvest

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  More Books by Karen MacInerney

  Recipes

  Bienenstich (Bee Sting Cake)

  Lebkuchen (Gingerbread) Oktoberfest Hearts

  Chocolate Glazed Lebkuchen

  Goat Milk Flan

  German Pretzels

  Farm-fresh Mozzarella Cheese

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  As I stared at what was left of my beautiful, once-verdant rows of crookneck squash, pumpkins, buttercup squash, and cucumbers, I reflected on the vicissitudes of farming. Where healthy plants had sprawled the week before, now the ground was covered with skeletal leaves and worm-riddled fruit. I nudged a pumpkin with my foot, and the soft flesh gave beneath my boot.

  It had been the third hottest summer on record in Buttercup, and most of the local farmers and ranchers had spent most of it praying for rain. Apparently, it had worked.

  Too well.

  After the blistering heat of the summer, the warm deluge that arrived in September had lasted for more than a week, providing a perfect breeding ground for the dreaded melon worm, a recent invader from South Texas. Last week, there had been rows of gleaming vegetables and lush, healthy vines. Now, I had rows and rows of wormy, dead plants to deal with… and not a whole lot to take to market.

  I sighed and glanced over toward where Blossom and her daughter were grazing. Thanks to the summer drought, I’d had to pay for more hay than I’d anticipated, which had wiped out most of the profit from the dairy part of the farm business. Soon, all the goats and cows would be pregnant again, and the milk supply would dry up while the moms devoted their resources to their growing offspring. Good for the farm in the long run, but not so good for the short-term finances.

  As I dug up a squash plant and tried not to dwell on gloomy thoughts, the sound of hammering floated across the pasture to me. I glanced over toward the Ulrich house, the hundred-and-fifty-year-old wooden house I had been talked into moving onto the property several months ago. It had belonged to one of Buttercup's first families, and I'd been talked into saving the historic structure. Thanks to a few small windfalls along with my improving business sense, renovations were moving along—slowly, but moving—and I was hoping to have the place ready to rent out in time for the spring antique fair down the road in Round Top. Ed Mandel, a local carpenter, had braced the house and was replacing the rotting studs; I’d already picked out tile for the bathroom and paint colors for the upstairs walls, and I was looking forward to refinishing the old oak floors. Today, Ed’s young assistant Nick Schmidt was replacing some of the decaying wood; from what I could tell, things were going smoothly, and Ed had assured me we were on schedule for a spring opening.

  At least that was one thing that was going right, I thought as I shoveled another wormy pumpkin into the growing pile.

  I’d taken care of the pumpkins and was halfway down the first row of squash—I was planning to remove and destroy the plants so that there was less chance of larvae staying hidden in the soil—when there was a creaking sound from the little house. As I looked back at it, the building seemed to slew to the left, toward the creek; a moment later, Nick shot out of the front door.

  I gripped the shovel and held my breath, hoping the whole thing wouldn’t collapse. It seemed to move a bit more, then stopped. I threw down the shovel and hurried over to where Nick was standing, hands on his head, his face the color of milk.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "I must have done something wrong," he said. "I was taking out a rotting board, and then the whole thing kind of… well…"

  "Almost fell over," I supplied. "But it didn’t," I added, trying for an optimistic tone, "and you’re safe and sound."

  "Right," he said in a weak voice, and I found myself wondering if my insurance policy covered buildings collapsing during renovation.

  "Maybe we should call Ed," I suggested.

  "Yes. We should," he agreed, but made no move for his phone. I pulled mine out of my back pocket and dialed, but got voice mail.

  "Hey, Ed," I said. "It looks like the house is kind of… well, tipping over," I said. "In fact, it almost collapsed on Nick," I said, glancing at the young man, "and I’m worried that if we have wind, the whole thing might go over. So if you give me a call and come check it out as soon as possible, that would be great," I added, and left my number for good measure before hanging up.

  "I don’t understand what happened," Nick said, a groove between his bushy eyebrows. Although he was only eighteen, he seemed older, somehow; maybe because the hard work had gotten rid of any teenaged gangliness. "We braced the whole thing."

  Together, we walked around the house, inspecting the cables Ed and Nick had put up to keep the house standing while they replaced some of the structural members. As I rounded the side facing the creek, I noticed that half a dozen of them had snapped. Had the wind been too much for them?

  "Were these like this when you got here?" I asked, nudging one of the fallen members with my foot.

  "I don’t know," he said a little bit sheepishly, and pulled his cap down over his eyes. "I didn’t look."

  I inspected the other pieces of wood; they were all braced firmly against the house. I was tempted to move the others back into place, but I wasn’t sure how to do it, and I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. Was the wet weather or the shifting house responsible for the bracing fail… or, I wondered with a shiver, had someone intentionally sabotaged the braces? It was an unpleasant thing to consider, and I decided to let Ed be the judge of what had happened.

  "Well," I said, "I don’t know about you, but I could use something cold."

  "I could use a Coke," Nick said honestly. "That scared the… well, you know."

  "I’ll bet," I said. "I don’t have Coke, but just picked up a six-pack of ginger beer at the Sweetwater Brewery, if you’d like one," I told him. I’d taken to patronizing the new brewery that had recently started business a mile or two east of the farm. I appreciated their beers, but their non-alcoholic ginger beer was my current favorite summer drink. "I’m not in the mood to pull up more dead plants at the moment, so we might as well take a break while we wait." I glanced up at the sky, which had darkened over the last few minutes: more rain.

  "If y
ou’re sure, that would be great," he said, following me over to the yellow farmhouse that had once been my grandparents’ and now belonged to me.

  As Nick sat down on one of the rockers on the porch, I opened the screen door to let my poodle Chuck out and headed inside to grab two ginger beers from the fridge. I also took the liberty of retrieving a jar of my homemade salsa and a bag of salty tortilla chips, which I poured into appropriately sized bowls and set on a tray next to the open bottles. A moment later, Nick and I toasted his survival—and the continued survival of the house—as Chuck sat begging for tortilla chips.

  "How long have you been working with Ed?" I asked as I crunched into a chip.

  Nick took a swig of ginger ale before answering. "Only a couple of months," he told me. "I… er, didn’t do so hot at Texas A&M, so I moved home and my parents made me get a job."

  I’d heard that he hadn’t had a spectacular debut at college. Then again, many of us hadn’t, myself included. I crunched on another chip and reflected that I’d been lucky to have supportive parents who got me some support and gave me a second chance instead of pulling the plug. Nick hadn’t been quite as lucky; my friend Molly had told me that his father had refused to pay for any more college after what appeared to have been a challenging first semester.

  "It happens," I said. "I don’t think I was ready for college yet when I started; my first year was something of a disaster."

  "Really?" he asked, perking up.

  "It was," I confessed. "Sometimes it’s good to take a break and figure things out; I think a job is a great idea."

  "Yeah, well, it may be long-term," he said glumly. "I don’t see how I can afford to go back."

  "Don’t worry about that yet," I said. "And when you do, you can look at financial aid if you have to. What do you think of working with Ed?"

  "It’s hard work," he said. "But it’s kind of nice to have something to show for it at the end of the day. I’ve always liked working with my hands."

  Although I was glad Nick was doing something he enjoyed, I hoped Ed was looking over his work; Nick was young and inexperienced, and today’s episode did not inspire confidence. I checked my phone to see if I’d missed a call from Ed, and then darted a glance at the little house; thankfully, it didn’t seem to have moved any more since we left it.

  Nick took another sip from his ginger beer and said, too casually, "Did you happen to see Teena while you were at the brewery?"

  "Teena Marburger?" I asked. "No… why?"

  "She said she was doing some marketing internship thing for them," he said, shrugging and turning a faint shade of pink. "You know. After school."

  "Good for her," I said. "I’ll bet she’s at the Oktoberfest kickoff tonight, though." Buttercup’s week-long Oktoberfest was starting, and the local brewery, which had just opened the past summer, was hosting the opening party and releasing one of the owners’ specialty beers. They’d also booked an oompah band, bratwurst and pretzel vendors, and folks making and selling German crafts. I wasn’t going to have a booth at the brewery, even though I was going to be selling my wares elsewhere at the festival, but I knew several locals who would be vending their products. "You should go," I suggested.

  "Don’t you have to be over 21?"

  "My friend Molly’s bringing her kids," I said. "I think you should be good; you just can’t sample the beer, unfortunately." I grinned. "Lots of ginger beer, though. And I think they’re making a special ‘butter beer.’"

  "And pumpkin juice, too?" he asked with a wry smile.

  "That always sounded kind of gross to me, honestly," I admitted.

  "Me too," he said as Ed’s pick-up truck turned into the bottom of the driveway. Nick set his ginger beer down hard—I could tell he was nervous—and practically bolted out of the rocking chair. Together, we hurried to meet Ed as he pulled into the empty space next to my truck.

  The back of his white F-150 was filled with spare bits of lumber and a variety of tool chests, and the vehicle was splattered with mud. When he opened the driver’s side door, I noticed that he was too.

  "Thanks for coming so quickly," I said. "What have you been up to today?"

  "Pourin’ a foundation on that new house for the Houston folks," he said. "Ran into a few problems; someone trampled the forms, looks like, but I think we got it worked out."

  "What about the rain?"

  "We covered it with tarps," he said.

  "Good thinking. Ginger beer, or iced tea?" I offered.

  "No thanks," he said. "I want to see that house."

  Together we traipsed across the field to the little old house by the creek.

  "What happened?" he asked as we followed him like ducklings trailing a mother duck.

  "I was replacing a joist, just like you showed me, and then all of a sudden, the whole house kind of… leaned," Nick said. "When Miz Resnick and I went around the house, we noticed that some of those two-by-fours we used to brace it got knocked over."

  "I was wondering if it might be the wind, but I figured you’d know better than I would." I suggested.

  "If so, that’s the first time that’s ever happened on one of my jobs," Ed said gruffly. In addition to his work boots, he wore faded jeans and a plaid shirt that stretched over his round belly. His hair was gray and wiry, and his dark brown eyes were sharp; Nick fidgeted nervously with the hem of his Metallica T-shirt as his boss inspected the cables.

  "You’re sure you didn’t mess with ‘em at all?" Ed asked.

  "No, sir," Nick said. "I mean, I didn’t touch them."

  "Did you check ‘em before you went in there to work?"

  "Ah… no, sir," Nick said, ducking his head.

  "Always check," he said. "You were lucky this time. Let it be a lesson to you."

  "Yes, sir," Nick replied.

  "I don’t want anyone going in there until we get this fixed," he said. "You’re lucky the whole thing didn’t come down on your head."

  "That bad?" I asked.

  Ed nodded. "That bad." He looked at Nick. "We’ll have to brace this again. Might do some on the inside, too, for good measure."

  I hugged myself, trying not think about what might have happened to young Nick. "Was it the weather, do you think?"

  Ed grimaced. "No weather I’ve ever seen can snap cables this cleanly."

  "You think someone cut them on purpose, then?" I asked.

  "I don’t like that explanation one bit," Ed said, his voice steely, "but that’s what it looks like to me. We’re damned lucky Nick here didn’t get killed."

  2

  Ed and Nick spent the next hour re-bracing the house while I finished shoveling up the dead cucurbit plants. I'd have to rotate crops next year, in hopes that would kill any larvae or eggs that had survived; and I'd probably also have to regularly spray with bT, an organic pesticide that interfered with the growth of the insects, to keep the population in check. As I finished scooping up another mass of dead plants, my eyes strayed to the three beehive frames I was building at the far end of my small peach orchard. It was a good thing bT didn't affect bees, or the sudden infestation would scuttle more than my squash harvest. Serafine Alexandre, who ran the Honeyed Moon meadery and was an expert in bees, had talked me through the beekeeping process and had helped me set up my first few hives. The fledgling colonies were just starting to prosper, and I was hoping to have my own honey and beeswax the following year. The last thing I needed was for a pesticide to knock out my new bee colonies.

  I had finished clearing another row of plants when Ed and Nick walked over from the little house.

  "All done?" I asked, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand.

  "She'll hold," he said. "We'll do some internal bracing tomorrow, just in case, but I'm worried about vandals. Might want to install a security light down there, just to prevent any more hijinks."

  "I probably should have looked for footprints," I said.

  "It's a muddy mess now," Ed said. "If it happens again, though..."

  "Has anyth
ing like this ever happened on any of your other jobs?" I asked.

  "Not that I know of," he said. "Of course, there was a contractor who wasn't too happy with me about five years ago. Came back and broke all the windows in a house I was working on, then threw paint all over the darned place."

  "No," I said. "Really?"

  "Really," he said with a sigh. "Took a week to clean up. But nothing like this." He peered at the house. "Did your goats get into somebody else's vegetable patch one too many times?"

  "Not that I know of," I said. Hot Lips and Gidget had made several unchaperoned outings since coming to the farm—including a memorable jaunt to the Christmas Market in downtown Buttercup. As had their buddy Blossom, the cow formerly known as Harriet Houdini, whom I'd acquired from a local dairy farmer who had neglected to inform me of her seemingly magical ability to slip through fences. She was particularly fond of the geraniums that flanked the town hall in the summer time. But I seemed to have finally figured out a fence system that kept them all corralled.

  "You never can tell with goats," Ed said ominously. "Heck, they might have chewed through the cables, for all I know."

  "I don't think so," I said. "The breaks were clean. Plus, unless they've figured out how to lock gates, there haven't been any recent wanderings."

  "I've heard stories," he said. "But I didn't see hoof prints, so they're probably in the clear. Still, it's worrisome. I'd definitely put up a security light; and don't go back in there unless you're sure nothing's been tampered with."

  "Got it," I said. "Thanks for coming out to take care of it so quickly."