There was a brief discussion what time dinner was, and before Neil left he stopped and looked back at Claudia.
“I might need to talk to you more later,” he said. “I still have some questions about Lori.”
“I’ll be around.” Claudia felt like she had been saying that a lot lately. But the mention of questions emboldened her to try one of her own.
“I was just wondering, has anyone been in touch with Dana?” she asked.
“Dana?”
“Yeah, I, um, saw a picture with Lori that had her name on it. I thought they might be close. Is she someone who might want to be here, if there’s going to be any sort of service?”
“Dana Herschel will not be coming to the funeral,” he said stiffly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Back at her cottage, Claudia went out to walk across the hillside while she thought over the idea she had while Betty was telling her about the weather. She had checked the forecast as soon as she got home, and sure enough, there was a warming trend on the way, with a high of seventy-seven predicted for Saturday in San Elmo Bay. It was likely to be the last warm weekend of the summer, and that was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to miss. Which was why Claudia was looking at the parking lot next to the marketplace, calculating costs and risks of holding an impromptu outdoor market there.
First, she needed to get the vendors on board. It was going to be a lot of work with no guarantee of profit, and she would understand if they would rather find another way to take advantage of the tourist influx, or maybe just go to the beach. Then, assuming they were agreeable, she would need tables, chairs, signs, and enough goods to sell to make the venture worthwhile. And then there was the bigger issue of how to handle promotion on such short notice. It was no good having all those people coming by if they didn’t know there was something to stop for.
It was insane, even imagining she could put on an outdoor market event in less than three days, but the thought of sitting at home while all of those potential customers poured through the town was too much to bear.
The police themselves were another issue; despite the fact that the only place Lennox had said was off limits was the market itself, she didn’t think he was likely to be flexible with his interpretations. But that was a chance she was just going to have to take, and if the police chief was that determined to put her out of business, then he could go ahead and explain why her using her own parking lot for its appropriately-zoned commercial activities was going to keep him from finding out who killed a woman inside the building.
Having made up her mind, Claudia made her way over to the lot. Losing the parking wasn’t ideal; if more than a handful of people showed up at a time they would quickly fill up the street-side spaces, but that was a risk she would have to take. A glance up the hill at Mr. Rodgers’ house reminded her of someone who was likely to be less sanguine about the possibility. If she had been feeling more charitable toward him, she might have thought about at least putting up some signs reminding people not to block the road up, but since he seemed to have decided to drive her out of business without ever having met her, he didn’t get that kind of consideration.
Unlike the geese, who got the same respectful distance Claudia always gave them when she passed their home. As usual, as soon as they heard her coming, they came to the door of their doghouse and watched her until she was out of range. They weren’t close enough to the parking lot to be a problem, but she did hope no one would wander off and get a lesson in the dangers of irritable waterfowl syndrome.
Claudia spent about twenty minutes walking around, making notes of her ideas and taking pictures so she would know what the notes meant. She came back to the house with a head full of plans and a crudely-drawn map of the potential layout, with an optimistic amount of space for lines to form. The next step was to actually tell her idea to the people whose names she had penciled into spaces on her map, and see if they laughed in her face or not.
She called the Mullers first, not just out of respect for their status, but because they hosted an open house at their farm twice a year, with music and goat-feeding demos, and crowds that numbered in the hundreds. Claudia wasn’t planning anything that elaborate, but she hoped Julie would be able to share her list of service providers, and maybe put in a good word for her.
Fortunately, Julie was more than enthusiastic about the idea. Claudia hadn’t even gotten to the point of asking her for the contact information when she was volunteering to call the vendors herself, with a warning that the portable toilet guys would always try to upsell you on the insurance. Claudia thanked her profusely, and went on to call the rest of her tenants, buoyed by this success.
It took very little time to convince Orlan, who was happy to have a venue to sell the produce he had earmarked for the marketplace, and for a reason to call his employees back in before they decided to take the rest of the summer off. He even offered to send them over early to help set up, which Claudia accepted, despite not knowing exactly what they were going to be setting up, or where, or if they were all going to get arrested for interfering with a crime scene before they even got started. Either way, it couldn’t hurt to have some strong young people on hand.
She reached Helen next, who gave a more measured response. Claudia tried to think of a way to bring up Helen’s fight with Lori, but the opportunity didn’t present itself. Neither Robbie and Emmanuelle or Carmen and Iryna were answering their phones, so Claudia left messages and decided to proceed as though the answers were yes. It wasn’t ideal, but time was tight, and if she wanted her idea to have any chance of succeeding, people were going to have to know about it, and that meant Claudia had to lean into one of her least favorite jobs: marketing.
It wasn’t the first time Claudia had needed to reach out to the media, so she had a list of the local outlets ready to go, once she remembered what folder she had saved it to. (Marketplace_Other, as it turned out.)
List found, she started making calls, with very little success. Even when she was able to reach someone, she was past the deadline to make it into the event listings in any of the local papers, and the best the public access station could say was that they would try to get it into the crawl on the bottom of the screen, but only if Rocky got in before noon. Still, she persisted, and when she ran out of names on her list she moved on to searching the web for any other outlets that might be looking for local food-event content.
She kept at it until the hunger pangs from her stomach were too insistent to be ignored, then ate a bowl of cereal while she switched to converting the notes she had made earlier with her ideas about the event into a more coherent plan, and a list of the things that were going to have to be done if this was conceivably going to happen. The phone interrupted her work periodically, first with the remaining tenants returning her calls and pledging their enthusiasm for the project, and then, in a less welcome development, from the host of a true-crime podcast who had somehow found her home number. Claudia was momentarily tempted to take him up on his offer of an interview, and then spend the entire time promoting the market, but her wiser self prevailed, and told him he had the wrong number.
At some point, she dozed off on the sofa, waking with a start when Teddy pushed a wet nose into her drooping hand. She had a moment of panic, because the sensation had entered into her dream as a sea creature reaching out of a jar of pickles to grab her, while Chief Lennox screamed that it was all her fault, and once she recovered from that, she was forced to admit that she wasn’t going to get anything more done tonight, and went to bed.
The next morning, Claudia woke with an “Oh God, what have I done?” feeling that she previously had only associated with alcohol-fueled online shopping sprees. But fortunately, if her enthusiasm for the project was flagging, there were already other people ready to pick it up.
She had barely gotten her eyelids propped open when Carmen and Iryna pulled into her driveway in their well-worn Subaru. There was something irresistibly delightful about the couple, and as t
hey unloaded a cooler from the back of the car, Claudia could feel her spirits lifting. She came out to greet them, with Teddy right behind her, ready to give everything a good sniffing.
“I know it’s early, but we just couldn’t wait,” Carmen said as she followed Claudia into the house. “We were talking all night about this market idea of yours, and we thought we should try out some new recipes we’ve been testing, maybe launch them there. Will we have power for cooking?”
“I’m working on that,” Claudia said, amazed, as always, at the pair’s energy. “I mean, yes, one way or another, I’ll have something for you.” She wondered how many extension cords she could run from her cottage to the parking lot without fusing a circuit breaker or enraging the geese. Probably better to rent a generator and some gas grills, she thought.
Carmen and Iryna had been the second tenants to apply for space in the marketplace, though their very modest budget meant that they took the smallest space. But they had made the best of it, naming their shop The Corner Pocket in honor of its position in a corner of the building, the pocket pie description of their offerings, and Iryna’s past as a pool shark on the river cruise circuit.
The couple had met at a networking event for female food entrepreneurs, and had chosen San Elmo as a home base for their joint business because it was near Carmen’s family, and Iryna wouldn’t live where she couldn’t see the water. Together, they looked like a mismatched set of salt and pepper shakers, Iryna tall and pale, with broad shoulders and a head of wiry silver hair, and Carmen was dark and so petite that whenever Claudia stood next to her she felt like there was a lot of her that must be surplus to requirements, if you could have an entire person who was that much smaller.
At the moment she seemed to be devoting herself to making Claudia larger, if the number of items she was unpacking from the cooler was anything to go by.
“Try the empanada first and tell me if you can guess what’s in it,” she said, handing Claudia one of the pastries.
She spoke slightly too fast, and there was a strained quality to Carmen’s voice that was unusual. From the way she and Iryna had been glancing at each other since they came in, Claudia suspected that there was something more than new product development that had brought them to visit her. She badly wanted to know what it was, but the couple were clearly unsure how to proceed and pressing them now was only going to make things worse. She hoped that if she let them take it in their own time she might find out more than if she forced the issue.
And besides, this was the part of her job she liked best. Claudia hadn’t gotten into the local foods business because she was excited about lease agreements and solid waste pickup schedules. What she loved was the food, and the people who made it, and for that she could make some time.
The empanada was done in Carmen’s usual style, a palm-sized pie made of a single round of dough, folded over and crimped in a design that identified the individual fillings. Mindful of the nutmeg mishap, Claudia bit into it gingerly, but she needn’t have worried. This empanada was packed with fresh summer corn, sweet and creamy, freshly sliced off the cob. The corn was mixed with slivers of caramelized onions and a touch of a funky flavor it took Claudia a moment to place.
“Fish sauce?” she said at last, and Iryna clapped her hands with glee.
“I told you she would get it! Helen kept telling us not to use too much, because it’s strong. But I told her, relax, Carmen knows what she is doing. Now you should try mine. This one first.”
Claudia did as she was told, and found a pierogi with a thinner wrapper than she was used to, more like a pot sticker, complete with a circle on the bottom where it had browned on the pan. Inside, there was nothing but soft cheese, lightly sweetened, and streaked with fresh basil.
“Perfect,” Claudia declared, because it was. “Is that Julia’s ricotta?”
“Of course. Nothing but the best! I also got some honey from a nice man out on Underhill Road. Maybe he would want to use the space Lori had? I can ask him.”
Claudia thought that might be a little premature, though she had to admit a honey seller sounded like a nice change of pace. She could even go out to see the bees, she supposed, just to be sure.
“Now this one,” Iryna said, turning the plate so the other pierogi was closer to Claudia. “I made it specially for you.”
Hoping that was a compliment, Claudia took a bite, and was greeted with a rush of familiarity. The filling was a mix of cheeses—definitely mozzarella, probably some parmesan and maybe jack?—with layers of tomato sauce and a fine dice of some of Robbie’s best spicy chorizo standing in for the pepperoni. Claudia couldn’t help laughing.
“Okay, you got me,” she said. “And yes, it’s delicious. I’ll take a dozen, for my freezer.”
“Pepperoni pizza pierogis!” Iryna crowed. “We’re going to call it the ‘Claudia Special.’”
“You’ll sell a million,” Claudia assured her. “But I think you need a catchier name.”
“Maybe we’ll work on that. After all, you aren’t that popular with everyone, are you?” Iryna seemed to think this was hilarious, but Claudia was too much on edge for that sort of joke.
“What do you mean?” she asked, just a shade too fast. She tacked on a laugh in an attempt to soften the effect, but Carmen was unconvinced.
“It’s nothing, just that neighbor of yours. That Rodgers man must have nothing better to do, with all the time he spends writing stupid things.”
Claudia sighed. “Tell me about it. What’s he done now?”
“He sent a letter to the town council saying they should revoke the business license for the marketplace because it is bringing a criminal element into the town.”
“But you shouldn’t worry about that,” Iryna added before Claudia could argue. “Nobody listens to him. All he does is sit up in that big house of his and complain, so why should anyone care?”
Claudia thought that might be a slightly overoptimistic read on the situation, but there didn’t seem to be much good in pointing that out. But it did give her an opening to bring the conversation back around to the main thing on her mind.
“Speaking of recent events, there’s something I’ve been wondering about. Do you guys have any idea what the issue was between Lori and Helen? I got the idea that something happened with them last spring, but I never found out the details.”
Claudia thought she had chosen a fairly neutral question, but it got more of a reaction than she had bargained for. Iryna froze, wide-eyed, and Carmen looked like she might be physically ill.
#x201C;We don’t know anything—” Carmen began, but Claudia cut her off.
“Come on,” she said. “It can’t be that bad, can it? What could possibly have happened all that time ago that you can’t even tell me about it?”
The pair looked at each other, locked in a silent conversation. Finally, Iryna seemed to win and she turned to Claudia, looking nervous but hopeful.
“I really don’t know what the fight was about,” she began, then paused.
“But?” Claudia prompted. “What happened?”
“Well, it was a Friday morning in the spring, and you know there’s not a lot of business then, so we didn’t open until late. When we did come, they were the only people there, with Lori sitting on that silly stool she had in her booth, looking so smug, you would have thought she had just sold one of her coasters to the Queen. And Helen was in her shop, chopping carrots so hard you could hear it in the parking lot. Whack whack whack whack.”
Claudia appreciated Iryna’s devotion to quality storytelling, but she could have done without the sound effects.
“I tried to find out what it was about, but Helen wouldn’t tell me, and I wasn’t about to ask that woman. She was always trouble, even before she died.”
Iryna did always have a way with words, though the words themselves might have disagreed. Claudia had other things on her mind.
“I wish I had known,” she said. “There was no reason to let her stay in the ma
rketplace if she was causing this many problems.”
“That’s what I told Helen, that she should tell you. But she wasn’t interested, acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“It was definitely bad,” Carmen offered. “I think Helen didn’t want people to think of her as causing trouble, so she tried to act like everything was back to normal. But a couple of times I caught her looking at Lori, and she looked like she could—she was obviously still mad.”
Claudia nearly asked what Carmen had almost said, but she thought she could guess.
“Okay, but they had a fight six months ago. That’s not great, but it’s not something to get too worked up about. What is it that’s got you both so bothered now?”
This time they didn’t make any attempt at denials, and the wordless conversation between the couple seemed more focused on who was going to do the talking. Ultimately, it was Iryna who took up the story.
“I had my yoga class last night, and when I was there I talked to Arlene Davis, who lives next door to Lori’s duplex. She’s a travel agent and she has to stay up late sometimes, you know? Because someone has a problem in Europe or something and she has to help them.”
Claudia wasn’t interested in the theoretical problems of European vacationers.
“And let me guess, she was up late on Sunday night? Did she see something?”
Iryna nodded, looked miserable.
“Arlene, she had a run in with the Chief Lennox a couple of years ago, and she said she was never going to talk to him again if she could help it. But she knew I worked in the marketplace, and we knew Lori, so she thought she would tell me and ask what she should do about it.”
“What did she see, Iryna?” Claudia asked, with rising concern.
“She said it was about nine o’clock, nine-thirty, when she was on the phone and she looked out the window. It was dark, so she couldn’t see so well, but there was someone hanging around Lori’s side of the duplex, looking in the windows. She couldn’t tell about the face or anything, but she thought it was a man, with dark hair, and the one thing she did see was that he was definitely wearing bright green high-top shoes. She said you could see them a mile off.”
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