Wicked Harvest

by Karen MacInerney

  "I shoved him in one of the tanks here and sprayed him with chemicals," he said. "Then I took him over to Sweetwater and stuck him in a barrel."

  "Nice," I said. "So suspicion falls on Simon."

  "Serves him right," he said. "And now, ladies... if you'll just come over here."

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you," Quinn said. "Folks know we're here. Suspicion will come right back and land on you if anything happens to us."

  I realized Quinn was lying. I'd been so busy thinking about what I wanted to say that I hadn't remembered to call Tobias; I think having Quinn with me gave me a false sense of security. And I never expected him to confess, anyway. Had she called Peter? I hadn't heard her do it, but maybe she had before we left?

  "I can deal with that," he said. "Just have to get rid of your vehicle. Not a problem. Who drove?"

  "I did," I admitted.

  "Give me the keys," he ordered, suddenly seeming a lot less tipsy.

  I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my key chain. I hesitated, and he cocked the gun. "Okay," I said, and took a step forward and handed them over.

  "Phones, too," he said, crushing my hope of a last-minute call to Tobias. Or 911, which would be a better call.

  Quinn and I both handed over our cell phones. He glanced at them and shoved them in his back pocket.

  "Good. Now, go that way," he said, waving us toward a door in the corner of the brewery. "Hands up," he said sharply as Quinn's hand moved toward her pocket again.

  We raised our hands and walked to the door. He stepped in front of us, gun still trained on me, then pulled the door open. Inside were pallets of cans waiting for shipment; there were no windows or other doors.

  "Get in," he said. We did as he asked; then, without another word, he slammed the door behind us. I heard the lock snick, and then footsteps moving away.

  "Nicely done," Quinn said as we stood in the darkness. "No phone, no light, and a drunk murderer with a gun hiding your truck so that he can kill us without getting caught."

  "Did you call Peter?" I asked.

  "I meant to, but we got talking... I'm such an idiot."

  "So am I," I said.

  "You didn't call Tobias?"

  "I was going to wait until the last minute so he couldn't tell me not to, and then... well, I forgot."

  "So we're hosed," she said.

  "Let's not get too pessimistic," I cautioned her.

  "Really, Lucy?" she asked. "What's Plan B, then? Or Plan C?"

  "I don't know yet," I admitted. "Let me think."

  I'd gotten a glimpse of the room's interior before he closed the door. It was filled with cans... pallets of them. Was there some way to use that to our advantage? As I sat there, my eyes adjusted to the gloom. Light poured around the edges of the door, helping illuminate the space enough to make out the dark hulk of the pallet stacks. I felt around for a light switch, but there wasn't one. There didn't appear to be a light fixture in the middle of the room, either; I swept my hand through the air, but encountered no string or chain. Which wasn't really surprising, as Max was clearly running a bare-bones operation.

  I focused on the door. "How's your kicking?" I asked.

  "Why?"

  "I thought you might be able to take down that door," I said.

  "It opens inward," she pointed out. "That makes it rather harder."

  "Give it a whirl?" I suggested.

  A moment later, I sensed movement and a loud "thud." The door quivered, but stayed firm. She tried a second and third time, but there was nothing. "It's a solid door," she said. "And a deadbolt. How about Plan D?"

  "I do have a Plan D," I realized suddenly. "We just have to restack some pallets of cans. Are you in?"

  She swore under her breath a little. "I don't have a Plan E, so I guess I don't have a choice."

  "We have to hurry," I said. "I don't think we'll have a second chance once he gets back." I told her my plan.

  "It might work," she said grudgingly. "But we'd better get cracking."

  We raced against time, sweating and praying Pfeiffer would take his time as we lugged cans off of the pallets and then restacked them all next to the doorway. It seemed to take forever.

  "Are they high enough yet?" Quinn panted when we got the levered the last pallet above the height of the doorframe.

  "Lord, I hope so," I said. "And I hope like heck this plan works, or we're toast. The only thing we're missing is a decoy."

  "How do we do that?"

  "With clothes," I said. I pulled off my T-shirt and jeans and felt my way to the pallets at the end of the room. I tucked the jeans into the stack at about waist height, so that they stretched down to the floor, and then arranged my T-shirt above it. "Good thing it's not cold," I said, as I walked back to the door in my underwear. "Ready?"

  "I'm ready," she said. We made our final preparations and took our places, hearts in our throats, hoping my crazy plan would work.

  21

  I have no idea how long it was before we heard footsteps in the brewery again. It felt like both forever and not nearly enough time, and we jumped at every creak and whirr from the brewery. Despite the dearth of clothing, I was sweating with nerves, hoping that my plan was going to work. We weren't sure if we could hear Pfeiffer coming, so we'd positioned ourselves while we waited. My feet hurt from standing on concrete, and I knew Quinn must feel the same.

  Finally, just when I was about to scream, I heard the deadbolt snick back. I could smell my own fear as the doorknob turned, and the door swung inward, the light making me wince.

  I saw the gun first, trained on the back of the room. And then everything happened at once.

  I pushed the button on the pepper spray, aiming it through the hole in the pallets I'd arranged to hide behind so that it hit Max right in the face. His hands instinctively went to his eyes. At the same time, Quinn pushed over the pallets we'd stacked up next to the door. I heard a grunt and the rattle of cans hitting the floor. I raced around the stacked pallets to where Max writhed on the hard floor.

  He still had the gun in his hand. The door was only half-open, held open by his legs. Quinn rounded at the same time; seeing the gun in his hand, she launched herself at him, pushing his arm down. As I watched, his wrist twisted, moving the gun bit by bit toward Quinn's head.

  "No!" I yelled, and he fired. The bullet ricocheted around the room, puncturing cans. Beer hissed out of holes in cans. I heard the gun cocking again, and leaped forward, coming down with my right foot on top of his hand—and the gun.

  Another bullet shot out of the barrel, puncturing another line of cans, and the smell of beer intensified.

  Max swore. I looked down; his hand was pinned to the ground, the gun in it smashed between the concrete and my boot.

  "Let me go," Quinn growled.

  "No way," he grunted back.

  "Now," she barked. As she did, I made out her hand rising, then coming down hard on Max's neck.

  His body went limp.

  I kicked the gun away from his flaccid hand and scrambled after it.

  "Are you okay?" I asked as my hand closed around the gun's grip.

  "Plan D isn't my favorite, and I never ever want to do that again, but at least it worked," she said. "You okay with the gun? I'm going to go find a rope."

  "I'll be here," I said.

  * * *

  By the time Rooster arrived, Pfeiffer had come to, still struggling to breathe. Quinn had tied him up, and I'd put my clothes back on. She'd found a phone in the brewery and called 911 as soon as we'd gotten Pfeiffer incapacitated.

  "What in the name of..." Rooster started as he pulled open the door to the storage room and took in the scene.

  "We'll tell you all about it," I said. "But first you might want to call the station and tell Opal to let Simon go."

  "What? Why?"

  "Max here confessed to murdering Felix and Billy," Quinn said. "And if we can find my phone—and Lucy's truck—you'll have it all on record."

  "You're welco
me," I added. "And do you have handcuffs on you? I'm getting tired of holding this gun."

  He blinked at us for a few minutes. "What are y'all doin' here in the first place?"

  "Like I said, it's a long story. He locked us in here; we managed to get his gun away before he killed us, but I'd be happy to be out of this storage room sooner than later, if that's okay with you," Quinn informed him.

  "You're sure he confessed?"

  Quinn and I shared a look.

  "Like I said, we'll be happy to tell you all about it. But first I want to get out of here and find my truck."

  * * *

  "If I didn't love you, I'd kill you," Tobias said when he got to the farm two hours later. We'd gotten a ride back to the town with one of the deputies and found my truck using a locator app on Quinn's computer; Pfeiffer had driven it down into a ravine not far from the farm. They still hadn't towed it out yet, and it was still evidence, so I was truck-less for the foreseeable future, but at least they had a recording of our conversation with Max Pfeiffer.

  Now, Tobias pulled me into a fierce hug, and then he told me off. "What were you thinking?"

  "I wasn't," I said. "You're right. Quinn told me the same thing. We were going to call, and then we both got distracted..."

  "She's no better," Tobias said. "She didn't call anyone either. You were almost killed!"

  "You're right," I said, touched that he cared so much. "I'm sorry."

  "Tell me what happened," he said, and as we sat down on the front porch with Chuck and the two kittens in our laps, I relayed everything that had happened.

  "So Billy was killed because he didn't take the job," Tobias said.

  "Pretty much," I said. "Although Billy wasn't a very nice person. Not that that excuses what Max did, but still..."

  He sighed. "It's tragic. But at least Simon won't be in jail for a crime he didn't commit."

  "True," I said.

  As we sat, contemplating what had happened, Ed's truck came down the driveway. "Oh, good," I said. "Maybe he can help us with the camera."

  Tobias and I each scooped up a kitten and walked out to greet Ed as he stepped out of his truck. "I was hoping to see you today!" I said. "I had another run-in with the Ulrich House last night."

  "I can see that," he said, and spotted the kittens in our arms. "Whatcha got there?"

  "Some stray kittens we found," I said. "The mama cat's that gray tabby; we're hoping to catch her, too, so we can take care of her."

  "You're good folks," Ed said approvingly.

  "I looked for the camera, but I couldn't find it."

  "That's because I hid it behind some ball moss, just in case someone went lookin'," he said. "I heard you had some excitement today, by the way."

  "That's one word for it," I told him. "But all's well that ends well. Except for Felix and Billy, that is."

  "Sad state of affairs," he said. "But at least we know we don't have a murderer runnin' around town anymore. Although we might still have a vandal on the loose," he said, reaching up into the branches of a crape myrtle and pushing a few bits of ball moss aside to retrieve a camera.

  "What's on it?" I asked.

  "We'll see," he said, hitting a few buttons so that it played on fast forward. I could see myself walking by the house, and later, when it was darker, a raccoon on the porch, and after that, what looked like mama cat. A deer wandered by, too, nosing at the grass on the side of the house. And then a person turned up, swinging a sledgehammer at the posts of the porch.

  "Whoa," Tobias said. "We got someone."

  "But can you see a face?"

  "Let me slow it down," Ed said. Tobias and I peered over his shoulder as he slowed it down. The face was in shadow, a flashlight beam focused on the sledgehammer. Then he shifted hands, and the flashlight illuminated a face for a split second.

  "Is that who I think it is?" I asked.

  "It sure is," Ed said. "And we are goin' to have some words."

  Tobias and I exchanged glances.

  The person who had been sabotaging the renovation project was Nick.

  * * *

  "But why would he do that?" I asked when we got back to the house. Ed had left to talk to Nick, and we were now sitting on the couch in my living room with two bottles of Bluff lager, theorizing. I knew the Oktoberfest market started soon, but Tobias had offered to help me... and besides, I needed a few minutes to breathe.

  "I have no idea. If he vandalized the scaffolding, that didn't end up well for him; he broke his leg."

  "And the Ulrich house almost fell down on his head," I said. "Do you think he was trying to make the job seem so dangerous that his dad agreed to send him back to school?"

  "It's not the brightest idea in the world, but he is a teenager..."

  I sighed. "Too much excitement for one week, if you ask me. Any word back on the feed sample, by the way?"

  "I haven't checked my messages!" He pulled his phone from his back pocket and checked voicemail. His face looked grave when he hung up. "It's ergot, all right. We need to talk to Adriana and find out who she sold her barley to."

  "I'm guessing it's whoever's supplying feed to Lotte Heinrich," I said.

  "I'll call her right now and tell her to stop selling it."

  "I bought some the other day and gave everyone a little," I said. "Will they be okay?"

  "They should be," Tobias said, "but don't give them any more."

  "Of course not." I stood up and stretched. "While you're doing that, I'm going to start loading the truck—your truck, if you don't mind." I was glad I'd unloaded the back of mine before driving it to visit Max Pfeiffer.

  "I'll come help you in a minute," he said. "You sure you want to do this tonight?'

  "Those soaps aren't going to sell themselves," I said. "Besides, I want to check in with Simon. And Teena."

  "I wish that girl would go to college this fall. She deferred because of Felix, her dad told me the other day."

  "Maybe she can undefer, if that's a word, and go this fall after all, even if it is a little late. I'll suggest she'll look into it, for what that's worth."

  "Good luck with that," Tobias said.

  "I know. You take care of the kittens, all right?"

  "Of course," he said. "They have names yet?"

  "Lucky and Smoky," I said.

  "You're keeping them?"

  I looked down at the kittens and smiled. The gray one was behind Chuck, batting lazily at his tail, and the orange tabby lay curled up on his back in between Chuck's front paws. "I'm not sure I have a choice."

  * * *

  A cold front swept through Buttercup just in time for Oktoberfest to open that evening. Tobias helped me set up, then headed off to retrieve dinner for both of us as I faced the onslaught of townspeople who had heard a little bit about what had happened earlier that afternoon. I glanced across the square to where Quinn's Blue Onion booth was; it was equally crowded with curious people. The Sweetwater booth was open, too, but I hadn't spotted Simon or Teena yet.

  "So Max Pfeiffer killed both of them?" asked Serafine Alexandre, who had left her mead booth to check in with me—and bring me a cup of mead. "I figured after today, you needed it," she explained as she handed it to me. I took a grateful sip of the cool, sweet drink and smiled at my friend. Her long black braids were swept up into a kind of crown above her high-cheekboned face, and with her long purple skirt and silk spaghetti-strap top, she looked exotic as always, particularly for downtown Buttercup.

  "He did," I said.

  "And Sweetwater's going to survive?" she asked.

  "I hope so," I said. "I'll do what I can to support them."

  "Me too," she agreed. "They've put so much into it, and are really making something special. I feel bad about Felix, though."

  "So do I. And the assistant brewer."

  "It's awful," Serafine said. "I'm so glad they caught the killer. How are the bees, by the way?"

  "They seem to be humming along," I said.

  "I'll come check them fo
r you this week, if you like."

  "I'd love that," I said.

  "I'll bring some more beeswax, too." She glanced at my dwindling candle supply. "It looks like you might need it."

  I gave her a hug and thanked her, then turned to the next person in line, who was Fannie, the owner of the antique shop on the square. Following her came a number of other Buttercuppians, most of whom purchased something before heading out to spread the news of what had happened.

  The oompah band was playing a sprightly tune, the chilled breeze was swinging the fairy lights, and the smell of roasting bratwurst and kettle corn was making me salivate by the time the stream of curiosity-seekers died down. Tobias had been waylaid, too; it took him the better part of three-quarters of an hour to make it back to the stall, by which time almost all of my soaps were sold.

  I'd just finished the bratwurst he'd brought me when Simon and Teena walked over to greet me.

  "Hey, guys!" I said. "Good to see you out and about," I told Simon, who was looking better than I'd seen him the last few days.

  "I hear I have you to thank for finding my brother's killer," Simon said.

  "And Teena here," I told him. "If she hadn't given me a few clues, I'm not sure I would have put things together."

  "I'm glad you did. I can't bring my brother back, but at least I know justice has been served."

  "I'm sorry you lost your recipes."

  "We didn't, actually," Simon said. "I have a copy in the safe."

  "Whew." I was relieved. "Are you going to be able to do it solo?"

  "I'm short my brother, of course, and my assistant brewer, but if Teena doesn't go back to school this fall, I'm hoping she'll stick around and take on more responsibility... And since we just signed a contract to join Brewlific, we'll have breweries across the country sharing their recipes and making ours."

  "You signed?"

  "Felix wouldn't have wanted it, I know, but it was the right thing to keep the business going," Simon said. "I think we'll have a bright future now."

  "I'm so glad," I said. "I know how hard you've worked."