Two Sleuths Are Better Than One

by Elizabeth Ashby

  CHAPTER THREE

  Maria Dolores

  While Keely was being questioned, I went about reassuring the vendors and seeing if they needed help packing up. Even as I was telling them that everything would be fine, I worried that my salsa contest would become a secondary victim of whoever had killed Coach Andy.

  Once I'd checked in with all the vendors, I could finally hurry down the hill to the site of the demonstrations to make sure everything there was under control. Most people had left, but a militantly unmoving Jack Condor waved me over to where he'd planted himself dead center in front of the tables that Cary was clearing of supplies.

  "You can't cancel the demonstrations," Condor insisted. He was wearing his oversize cowboy hat today, which had to have his scalp sweating in this weather. I was fairly certain the hat was less an indication of experience with rounding up steers, and more about trying to make himself look taller. It actually worked for that, at least at first glance. Plus, it covered up his thinning hair. As further distraction from his physical shortcomings, he wore a dozen rings that probably added up to more weight than my sling bag even when it was filled to capacity with emergency supplies. With all that weight on his fingers, he needed the muscles of his beefy arms just to keep his hands from dragging on the ground.

  Condor was one of the least popular residents of Danger Cove, in equal measures because he was a greedy developer of shoddy housing and because he was an arrogant jerk. He'd never been to the farmers' market before, as far as I knew, but I'd gone with Merle to some land use planning hearings when Condor had wanted to develop some properties far beyond what was reasonable. He'd even come sniffing around the Pear Stirpes Orchard after the incident with the dead body buried there, suggesting Merle should sell for a fraction of its worth because no one would want to be associated with a murder site. Merle hadn't given it a second thought, and I'd just been grateful that the market was held on public land that even Condor knew he could never get his hands on so I'd never have to deal with him.

  "I'm sorry," I said with total honesty. "The police insisted on shutting down today's activities."

  "But I already paid my fee to enter the contest next week, and I was relying on learning everything I needed to know from the chefs you promised would be here today."

  "If I could change things, I would, but it's out of my control." Detective Ohlsen had apparently decided that leaving the market open during his previous investigations had been a mistake, since the original murder had been followed, every single time, by another attempted murder on the market grounds. It still seemed a bit unfair to shut us down, since I'd always been the intended second victim in the past and I was willing to take the risk again. But Ohlsen had insisted that the entire market had to be closed for the rest of the day. And that included the salsa demonstrations, even though they were down the hill by the historical garden, separated by a few hundred feet from the rows of canopied stalls.

  I continued, "Detective Ohlsen was adamant that everything had to be shut down for the day, but he agreed that it could be rescheduled for tomorrow. I confirmed with the mayor that there were no other plans for the site then, so we can pick up right where we left off today."

  "I can't be here tomorrow," Condor whined. "I've got an open house to run."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I did try to convince Detective Ohlsen to let the demonstrations continue."

  "You should have tried harder." Condor took off his hat to fan himself, drawing the attention of the other few remaining audience members who were quietly making their way to the parking lot like he should have been doing. "Or are you like everyone else in town, biased against me? I thought I finally had a chance to prove I'm good at something. The blind tasting of the entries means they have to treat me fairly for a change. And now you're keeping me away from the training that everyone else will get."

  I stifled the urge to roll my eyes. Patience was required in this job, but it didn't come naturally to me.

  "I didn't postpone the demonstrations to spite you. I certainly didn't kill Coach Andy so they'd have to be shut down today, and I didn't know you were unavailable tomorrow." I had let more of my annoyance show than I should have, so I tried for a more conciliatory tone, adding, "Perhaps you could get someone else from your office to oversee the open house so you can be here."

  "There is no one else," Condor said irritably. "I fired my assistant yesterday."

  And I was supposed to know that how?

  What was left of my patience ran out. I didn't have time for this. Condor wasn't going to listen to reason, he wasn't a regular customer so it wouldn't be a big loss if he boycotted the market in the future, and I still needed to contact the remainder of the chefs scheduled to do demonstrations to reschedule their appearances for the next day.

  "You've got two options left," I said. "You can either go ahead and do your best with the contest next week, or you can drop out of the contest."

  "I already paid the fee."

  "Under the circumstances," I said, "I'll authorize a refund if you wish."

  "I don't want to quit. I want to win."

  "Then go ahead and make your salsa." It wasn't like he was investing money he couldn't afford to spend. The fee was a measly twenty bucks, after all, since most of the expenses were underwritten by the market's advertising budget, and Condor owned what had to be at least five or ten million dollars' worth of real estate in and around Danger Cove.

  "All I'm saying is it's not fair," Condor said.

  He seemed to be working himself up to continue with his complaints, but the garden club's president, Sargent Adams, started in our direction, and that seemed to convince Condor that it was time for him to leave.

  Sargent had been career military, his rank sounding like it matched his name, and despite being in his midsixties, he was more physically fit than I'd ever dreamed of being. It wasn't just his height or his muscular build that made him imposing. The hint of suppressed fury in his eyes, even when he wasn't actually upset about anything, tended to scare off all but the most foolhardy. Or those, like me, who knew he was really quite harmless unless someone attacked his garden or his friends.

  The way Condor took off in a rush suggested he'd had run-ins with Sargent before. At some point, Condor had probably tried to turn a community garden into a cheap apartment complex and earned the garden club president's ire. Sargent did take his plants seriously. And he was persuasive enough that he'd even convinced Detective Ohlsen that weeding and other work on the garden could continue for the rest of the day, even though the guided tours of it had to be canceled in the wake of the murder.

  "Is it true?" Sargent barked. "That Coach Andy was the victim?"

  "I'm sorry, but yes, he was," I said. "Did you know him well?"

  Sargent heaved a loud sigh. "Yeah. He was a good guy. Really cared about the kids he coached. He coulda been making a fortune as a commentator or paid spokesperson, but he turned down all the offers, saying it would take his time away from more important things, like his kids. Meaning the players he coached. He didn't have any children of his own."

  "I guess that's a blessing," I said. "No one is missing a dad."

  "He's got a wife though," Sargent said. "Don't know much about her. She never came to the high school football games, and during the garden club meetings there was a lot of speculation about why she wasn't more involved with the community. Some members thought she should have joined us in maintaining the educational gardens at the high school. Not necessarily digging in the dirt with us—not everyone likes getting their hands dirty as much as we do, and we know that—but they thought she should have at least shown an interest, maybe donated a few plants or showed up for moral support."

  "Do you know why she didn't?"

  "Sorry, no," he said. "The conversation quickly moved on to whispers about marital problems and her wanting to move back to Seattle, so I just tuned out. People's private lives are none of my business."

  "Unfortunately, Andy's and his wife's pri
vate lives are going to become pretty public now, as part of the police investigation. The spouse is always a prime suspect when there's a murder."

  "I just can't believe anyone would kill the coach," Sarge said. "Everyone loved him."

  Not quite everyone, I thought. Someone had been angry enough with Coach Andy to beat him to death. He hadn't been hit just once, which could have been accidental. He'd had a dozen welts on his arms, as well as the more serious blow to his head. The multiple blows suggested to me that at least one person hadn't admired him. And there had been the older bruises too, so perhaps more than one person had hated him.

  *

  Sargent went back to his gardening, and I headed up to the market to oversee the end-of-day procedures. The canopies and tables could be left in place for just one night without any major risk of damage or theft, but the products all had to be packed up and secured elsewhere, and that took time. Only about a quarter of the vendors had left so far. My boyfriend, Merle, was still there, but he'd finished emptying his stall of inventory, even without the help of his assistant, JT, who was back at the orchard keeping an eye on the goats, who were busy controlling the weeds around the trees.

  Merle was half leaning, half sitting on the edge of an empty table near the front of his stall, checking messages on his phone. He was tall and lean, and I thought he looked incredibly sexy in his worn jeans and the bright green T-shirt with the Pear Stirpes Orchard logo on it, even more than when he dressed up in what he called his lawyer duds. He used to be a litigator in Washington DC before his wife died and he'd decided to make some big changes to his lifestyle. He'd shut down his legal practice six years ago and become a farmer in Danger Cove. We'd been attracted to each other from the moment we'd met at the grand opening of the Lighthouse Farmers' Market and had become close in the slightly more than a year since I'd become the market's manager, largely on his recommendation.

  I now lived in the caretaker's cabin at the orchard and spent a good deal of time with Merle in the farmhouse as well. We usually commuted to the market together in his pickup truck, and we hadn't expected that there might be any reason why we'd be leaving at different times today. Merle would lose a day's work by sitting around the market when there weren't any customers, and he had plenty of work to do back at the orchard, since August was a busy time of year on any farm. If I'd been in his shoes, I'd be chomping at the bit to leave, but Merle had all the patience I didn't have, so he didn't complain about waiting.

  "I can get a ride home later with the delivery driver when he's finished with his route," I suggested, keeping an eye on the vendors passing us, carrying their products down the Memorial Walkway to the parking lot or returning from there for another load. "He usually texts to let me know he's done, and I can ask him to pick me up. You don't need to sit around and wait for me."

  "I'm not in any rush to leave," Merle said, but he didn't sound entirely convincing.

  He was trying to protect me, I thought. He'd blamed himself for not doing more the last time someone had been killed at the market and I'd ended up in danger. It hadn't been his fault, of course, but he'd still felt responsible. That sort of guilt had plagued him during his days as a lawyer too, when he'd always felt, with no real justification, that he should have done more for his clients. That level of stress had led to burnout and the desire for a less stressful career as a farmer. As he explained, the orchard work was just as hard, but if he made a mistake or slacked off, the only one who suffered was him. And maybe the goats, although they were pretty self-sufficient.

  "It's okay to go," I said. "Really. I'll be perfectly safe here with the vendors."

  "I know it's irrational of me to worry," Merle said. "The place is crawling with cops, and they'll be here well after the vendors are gone and you leave. But knowing something and really feeling it are two different things. I've never been much of a risk-taker, and I'm not going to start now. Not when your safety is on the line."

  "In that case," I said, hopping up to sit next to him on the table, "we can chat while the rest of the vendors pack up. We haven't spent much time together lately. Time when we're not working, I mean. We really need to take a vacation soon."

  "I did enough traveling when I was a trial lawyer to last me for the rest of my life, so I'd be just as glad to stay home for our vacation," he said. "But I know you want to travel, and I want you to be happy. So pick a time and a place, and I'll be there."

  "How about this week in Paris?"

  "I asked for that, didn't I?" he said ruefully. "If I could drop everything and spend a week doing nothing but be with you, I would. Wherever you want. Just not right now. It'll be another two months at least before the pear harvest is complete, and I still need to find someone reliable to take care of the goats when we go away. It will take some time to figure it out."

  His assistant, JT, had a tendency to lose track of time while working in the distillery and didn't always notice when a whole day—or longer—had passed since the animals had been fed and watered. And it wasn't as if Merle had bought animals that required daily attention just to keep me from traveling. He'd only ended up with the goats when the person he used to rent them from had been forced to sell them.

  Before the addition of livestock to Merle's responsibilities, I'd been thinking we could travel during the winter, when the market was on hiatus and the orchard was dormant. But then the goats had moved in, and I'd found that the off-season still entailed a great deal of work for the market, especially when I'd started to plan some extras, like the delivery service and the salsa contest. There hadn't been any time to get away for more than the occasional weekend. And on top of that, Merle had revealed his lack of interest in seeing other parts of the world. It had been the first time we hadn't had compatible goals, and then the market season had begun, so we'd had a reprieve from having to resolve the issue. But if we were going to travel in the coming winter, we needed to start making plans soon. Just not necessarily today.

  "I understand," I told him at last. "A quick and exotic getaway is just a fantasy. I probably couldn't leave town myself while the murder investigation is ongoing."

  "You think you're a suspect?" Merle asked with a note of irritation. "And you talked to Ohlsen without me? I saw you heading up to his command central up near the lighthouse earlier, but I thought you'd call me if it was anything more than a routine witness statement."

  "Relax," I said, patting his thigh. "There's no reason to think I'm a suspect. Keely Fairchild found the body with me, and I don't think he'd been dead for long, so we can alibi each other."

  "You could have been partners in the crime," Merle said. "In theory, I mean."

  "That's ridiculous," I said. "Neither one of us has a motive. I barely knew Coach Andy, and he'd agreed to do everything for the salsa contest that I asked him to do, even refusing any payment. So why would I kill him? And Keely had never even met him. She only had a vague physical description to help her track him down."

  "What was she doing looking for him then?"

  "Nothing ominous," I assured him. "Apparently someone died on his property a few days ago, and Keely said she wanted to ask him about the victim. She needed him alive for questioning."

  "She could have lied to you about her interest in the coach."

  "I don't think so," I said. "But if you promise not to cross-examine her too aggressively, you can question her at dinner tonight. We're meeting at the Smugglers' Tavern at seven."

  "I suppose you two bonded over the dead body and are going to be BFFs now."

  "The experience definitely made an impression on us both. But the dinner plan is less about instant friendship than the shared suspicion that Coach Andy's and Gabe Portillo's deaths are connected. I tested out Ohlsen's reaction to the possibility that the coach had been killed for reasons related to his friend's death, but he said it was too early to commit to a theory of the case."

  "Ohlsen's a good detective," Merle said. "Keeping an open mind is what he's supposed to do."

&nb
sp; "The bigger problem will be to get Lester Marshall to see a connection if one exists. I'm glad I don't have to deal with him directly." I'd worked with him once before, and he'd almost gotten me killed by not listening to me. "Poor Keely is stuck with him investigating the other case on behalf of the quilt guild. Apparently the victim was a quilt collector."

  "Ohlsen isn't going to have an easy time of it either," Merle said. "I didn't know Coach Andy well, but he moved back to Danger Cove around the same time I bought the orchard. The town really rolled out the welcome mat for him. I ran into him a few times over the years at various charity events for the high school, and he seemed like a really decent guy, loved by everyone. The whole town is going to be clamoring for an arrest, and I can't imagine anyone who might have wanted him dead."

  "What about his wife?" I asked. "Apparently she's not as involved in the town's activities as Coach Andy was, and there's some speculation about their marriage being shaky."

  "Never met her," Merle said. "I don't want to speculate on their marriage, but the other criticism doesn't mean anything. Judging from my own experience with bar association events, most spouses don't enjoy their partner's professional activities. My wife never came to any of my work-related events. It didn't bother me—I found most of them pretty dull myself—but other people occasionally thought it meant our marriage was on the rocks."

  "If it's true that everyone in town loved Coach Andy—and I heard that from a lot of people when I hired him as the salsa contest judge—then his wife's the best suspect, even if we only have gossip to establish a possible motive."

  "I'm sure there are other possibilities," Merle said. "His retirement from pro football was a bit of a surprise, if I remember correctly. There could have been people who wanted him to keep playing. Or wanted him to stay in the professional sports world in some other capacity and harbored ill feelings when he left to become an underpaid high school teacher."