Murder Goes to Market

by Daisy Bateman

  Claudia was a lot less interested in this failure of Brandon’s planning abilities than she was in this new entry to the scene of the crime.

  “What did the car look like?” she asked. “Make? Model? Local plates or out of state?”

  Brandon shook his head.

  “It was just a normal car. A sedan, I guess? Nothing fancy. I was mostly trying not to get noticed, so I didn’t really look.”

  “Okay, well, it’s probably not important,” she said, but failed to entirely believe it.

  She probably could stand to be skeptical of a few other things, if you came right down to it. Brandon’s story was convincing, but that didn’t mean she had to be convinced. He had admitted to fighting with the victim, and threatening her, and anonymously exposing her fraud. Could he have just left out the part where he ultimately solved his problem with a blow to the head and a cheese wire? The idea seemed absurd, but every idea seemed absurd, and that didn’t make Lori any less dead.

  “So, what are you going to do?” Helen asked, and for a terrifying second Claudia thought she had been doing her thinking out loud. But no, Helen only wanted to know what the police’s number one suspect was planning for information that would firmly incriminate someone else.

  “Nothing, for the moment. As far as anyone else is concerned, this conversation never happened. But I can’t guarantee that Lori’s neighbor isn’t going to tell the police about what she saw, so you should probably have a plan for what to do if that happens.”

  Helen nodded, and gave her son a look while her mouth set into a firm line.

  “We will. And, Claudia, thank you. You didn’t have to come here.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Claudia said, more embarrassed than when Helen had been accusing her of framing them. “What’s important is that we get this settled so we can go back to normal.”

  There was general agreement on that point, but no one seemed to want to elaborate and the conversation lapsed. Finally, it was Victor who brought it back around to the other issue of the day.

  “So, the pickled seaweed,” he said, as the smallest dog tried to climb up his pant leg. “Should we offer it as spicy or mild?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  By the time Claudia left the Paks’ it was past lunchtime, but they had made good progress on the plans for the outdoor market and Teddy would now sit on command. She could have gone home and done some more work, but since she was out anyway, she decided to make a detour to visit another tenant. So, after a brief stop at San Elmo’s tiny grocery store for a replenishment of her wine and dog food stocks, and one of their surprisingly good deli sandwiches, she made her way to Robbie and Emmanuelle’s home and pork-curing emporium.

  They lived at the end of a minor county road, where a sign hanging on a gnarled driftwood tree announced that you were approaching Happy Toad Farm. The name was widely suspected to be a drug reference, but Emmanuelle insisted it related to having found the namesake amphibian under a bucket when they were first viewing the property. What was not in dispute was that this was an agricultural operation like no one in the area had ever seen.

  Claudia hadn’t spent a lot of time on pig farms, but she suspected most didn’t have their entrances framed by a graceful arch of trained fig trees. She passed through it (alone, having left Teddy in the car with the windows cracked and an improvised water dish, not being sure how well she was going to deal with chickens), to a small patio decorated with stylishly dilapidated furniture. Beyond the patio were two raised-bed vegetable gardens, displaying their rows of tomatoes, squashes, and beans under the bird netting like the jewelry case of a vegetable-loving giant.

  It all looked like a picture from a magazine, and for good reason. In just the year and a half Claudia had known them, Emmanuelle and Robbie’s “little coastal homestead” had been the subject of three feature articles and one cookbook photo shoot. (Ironically, vegetarian.) The scene was perfect and precise in every way, but whenever the wind shifted there was an undeniable whiff of pig in the air.

  Any new farm in the area was cause for local curiosity, but one so far outside the norm drew special attention. As soon as Robbie and Emmanuelle had arrived in town, Julie had gone on a fact-finding mission, which had turned up the information that Emmanuelle’s father was a banker of some variety, rich enough to set up his only daughter in whatever lifestyle she desired. What he thought of her choice to spend it here was as yet undetermined.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t that hard to understand. Claudia had rung the bell as she came in through the arch, and it was only a couple of minutes until Robbie came to greet her.

  As happened every time she saw him, she found herself surprised by how good-looking he was. Robbie was at least fifteen years older than his twenty-something wife (though he affected the look of someone born a good century back), but no one thought of them as a mismatched couple. Between the wax on the mustache, the long, rectangular beard, and the ever-present suspenders, it was easy to get distracted from the person underneath the affectations. But not that easy. The untamed eyebrows shaded bright blue eyes, and the beard covered, but didn’t quite disguise, a strong chin and enviable cheekbones. Robbie was thin and not particularly broad-shouldered, but Claudia had it on authority that there were some women who liked that sort of thing just fine, particularly when paired with the tan and muscles that life on even the fanciest of farms was likely to produce. If Emmanuelle hadn’t been interested in the country life to begin with, she might have found herself willing to be convinced.

  And she wasn’t the only one who was susceptible. Claudia didn’t have the data to back it up, but she was confident that there were a lot of women, and no small number of men, who left the marketplace with significantly more cured meats than they had intended on buying, and no reason they were willing to admit to for their sudden urge to shop for pork.

  Claudia liked Robbie, but despite recognizing that he was objectively attractive, he left her cold. Which was for the best, obviously. She had enough on her plate without going moony-eyed over a married tenant.

  Adding to his appeal, Robbie was also quite charming. He greeted Claudia like her arrival was the best thing that had happened to him all day, and only didn’t offer his customary hug because, as he explained, he had just come from fixing the gate on one of the pig pens.

  “To what do we owe the honor of this visit?” he asked, and somehow it didn’t come across as sarcastic.

  “I hope you don’t mind my dropping by,” Claudia said. “I just wanted to see how you guys were doing, and run some ideas I had for this weekend by you. Is Emmanuelle around?”

  “She should be. Let’s go and find her.” He made the act of looking for someone to greet a surprise guest sound like a delightful treasure hunt, and Claudia wondered if she should be wearing a hat.

  Robbie’s best guess was that Emmanuelle would be in the kitchen garden, and sure enough, they came around the corner to find her crouching next to another set of raised beds at the back of their renovated Victorian farmhouse, pulling dandelions from around the strawberries. She was a petite, slender woman with long, chestnut-brown hair that she had wound into an artfully messy bun. For her work in the garden, Emmanuelle was dressed in blue and white striped overalls and a yellow tank top, with soft leather gloves and surprisingly practical plastic clogs. Aside from the shoes, she looked like the platonic ideal of the “person with a garden,” and it was no wonder that she had made at least one thirty-under-thirty list as the “Aspirational Agriculturalist.”

  But there were no photographers with her today, and she seemed happy for the interruption to her weeding. Claudia expounded on her plan for the outdoor market, with special emphasis on the one-off specialness of the event. She knew from Emmanuelle’s social media presence that there was nothing she loved more than things that were made in small quantities or only available after standing in a long line, preferably both. More to the point, she had built up a fairly significant following of like-minded people, who were e
xactly the type Claudia would like to have show up for her short-notice event.

  “That sounds great, and to be honest I was worried about what we were going to do with the fresh sausages. Maybe we can borrow a grill from someone and cook them up to order,” Emmanuelle said. “I’ll give the bakery a call and see about getting some buns.”

  “I was thinking just that,” Claudia agreed, working her way around to her main point. She tried to make it sound casual, like a thought she just happened to be having as she was examining this pattypan squash plant. “Also, is there anywhere you can think of to publicize the event? We’re going to need a good turnout if we want this to work.”

  “You should be able to do that, shouldn’t you?” Robbie said to his wife. “You can post it to all of your friends.”

  “My followers,” she corrected, like a fussy cult leader. She straightened up and brushed a strand of her hair out of her face, casting an appraising eye around the rows of vegetables and herbs. “Of course I’ll share it, but I’m not really sure it’s going to do that well. Without a good picture, it’s hard to get much engagement, and I can’t take any pictures if it hasn’t happened yet.”

  Claudia couldn’t argue with that, and she was happy to concede the point about the pictures to Emmanuelle’s expert opinion. She had been hoping for a little more optimism, though.

  But Emmanuelle went on.

  “What we should do is get in touch with some of the San Francisco food and event networks. I can see if that girl I met at Coachella still has her newsletter; maybe she can squeeze something in tomorrow.”

  “That would be fantastic,” Claudia said. “The worst thing that could happen is if we did all this work and nobody showed up.”

  It wasn’t even in the top ten worst possible things, but no one said it. Robbie’s next question, though, made it clear where his mind was going.

  “What are we going to do about Lori?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” said Claudia.

  “Well, people are going to ask questions. Do we say the event is in her memory or something?”

  Claudia tried to imagine how the police chief would react to that idea, and thought it would almost be worth it to see his face. But even for her, it was a bridge too far, and she said so.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea. None of us really knew her that well, and I don’t want to give the impression that we’re exploiting her death. Maybe we can set up a little table with a book people can write memories of her in?” And then read that book later, because even if you were being considerate, there was still time to gather information.

  “That sounds nice,” Emmanuelle agreed. “I wonder if anyone did know her, though? I tried to talk to her once, because I’ve done some shibori dyeing in the past, and I was wondering how she was getting such strong reds with natural dyes, but she got really weird about it. There were times after that I thought she was avoiding me, but I might have imagined it.”

  “She was always really nice to me,” Robbie added. “But yeah, there was this weird thing that whenever Emmie was around she would kind of clam up and vanish.”

  “I think I can explain that one,” Claudia said. She was surprised that the news of Lori’s deception hadn’t reached them, but Robbie and Emmanuelle weren’t very well connected to the general flow of San Elmo society. She gave them an abbreviated version of the story, leaving out the new information about Brandon’s involvement. When she was done, the couple looked at each other, sharing a private conversation that ended with a decision.

  Robbie took the lead in explaining.

  “That actually answers some questions we’d been having. We didn’t know if we should have said anything, but there was a thing that we’ve been worrying about. Emmie’s been doing a lot of promotion for our business, and a couple of weeks ago she got a message from a writer she knows at a pretty major publication, asking about scandals at the marketplace. He said he’d been contacted by someone there who had told him she had a big story for him and asking if he was interested in an exclusive. But she wouldn’t give any details, so the writer was looking for more information before he wasted his time.”

  “I told him I didn’t know about anything,” Emmanuelle said. “And I asked who he’d been talking with. He didn’t have a name, but he was pretty sure it was a woman, which didn’t narrow it down much, though honestly, I kind of thought it had to be Lori. I mean, there was no one else at the marketplace I could even imagine trying to do something like that, and when I got to thinking about it I remembered there was one time she borrowed my phone to make a call, and when I got it back my contact list was open.”

  Robbie nodded thoughtfully. “When Emmie told me about it, I thought it was funny too, but we weren’t sure what we could do. We didn’t want to make trouble, and there was no evidence it was her, or what she might be up to. To be honest, we figured it was probably just some ploy to build publicity for her shop. But then Lori died, and we didn’t know what to think.”

  Emmanuelle added, “Also, I don’t know if it’s related, but a couple of months ago I was at the copy place in Sebastopol mailing a package, and Lori was there talking to one of the employees about getting a photo blown up to poster size. Which I didn’t think was weird at all; she needed something to make her booth look nicer, and I thought I should ask if she wanted some help with composition, because I’ve done some of that. But as soon as she saw me she looked at me really funny and wouldn’t say anything more. So, you know, I just left, because it was none of my business, but it was odd.”

  She pinched a spent bud off a dahlia, looking thoughtful.

  “Do you think she was trying to do something to hurt the marketplace?” Emmanuelle asked. “I mean, selling fake bags, calling reporters, it makes you wonder.”

  It would make Chief Lennox wonder too, which was one of the reasons Claudia was not excited about this theory. She hoped that when he got around to talking to Robbie and Emmanuelle, these particular details would have slipped their memories. Not that she could say so, so she did the best she could to redirect.

  “But why? That’s a lot of money and work to try and sink a random business, run by people you’d never met. What was in it for her?”

  Robbie just looked thoughtful, but Emmanuelle sighed in exasperation.

  “I don’t know; it doesn’t make any sense. But she was definitely up to something. And now she’s definitely dead.”

  It wasn’t the most elegant of eulogies, but it did sum up the problem.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Claudia had made it home and was negotiating with herself for how she was going to divide her time between murder investigating and event planning (she had decided on a sixty–forty split, but it wasn’t clear which was going to be which) when Teddy started barking at a car that had pulled into her driveway.

  It was an American subcompact with Arizona plates and a rental company bar code on the windshield. After a delay that seemed to involve messing with the parking brake, the driver’s side door opened and Neil Hahn emerged, looking annoyed.

  Claudia retreated from where she had been watching around the edge of the curtains, and had a few seconds to think about this development before it continued to develop. She had not parted from Lori’s ex-husband on the best possible terms, and it was unlikely that this was going to be the start of even a moderately attractive friendship. On the other hand, he was someone who might have useful information, and she didn’t think he would be pulling up in her driveway in broad daylight with bad intentions.

  He knocked on the door, and it was time to make a decision. In a house where no spot was more than twenty-five feet from the front door, there was no point in pretending she was too far to answer right away. So she went to greet him, with Teddy right at her heels and growling all the way.

  “Miss Simcoe? Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could spare a couple minutes. I had a few questions about Lori that I hope you can help me with.”

  He was
dressed in a classically preppy outfit of pink shorts and a patchwork button-down, topped off with an honest-to-god sweater tied around his shoulders. He looked so ludicrously out of place on her cracked front step that Claudia almost laughed in his face. The only thing stopping her, other than basic courtesy, was the fact that he already looked irritated enough as it was. So she suppressed her amusement, invited him in, and offered him a seat at her kitchen table and a cup of coffee, while Teddy took up a position next to her chair and kept a sharp eye on the visitor.

  “What was it you wanted to ask me about?” Claudia asked as Neil choked down the first sip of the coffee. (It wasn’t the first time Claudia’s more-is-more approach to caffeine consumption had failed to win a fan.)

  “I was looking into some of Lori’s affairs,” Neil said, once he had recovered his composure. “And there were a couple of things I was wondering about. You said you canceled Lori’s lease because you found out that she had been selling mass-produced products, right?”

  Claudia agreed that that was the case.

  “So how did you find out about that in the first place? Were you checking up on her or something? Did you want to find a reason to throw her out?”

  “No, of course not.” Claudia didn’t know what had inspired this line of questioning, but she didn’t like where it was going. “Someone left the evidence for me anonymously. I’m not in the habit of depriving myself of rent-paying tenants, but once I knew what was going on, I had no choice but to ask her to leave.”

  “Oh, please. You could have kept her on if you had wanted to. Just raise the rent and take your cut.”

  “I’m not interested in your input,” Claudia snapped. “I don’t know what you think you’re getting here, but if you’re looking for some kind of payout, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

  That seemed to throw him for a loop, and a flash of confusion passed over Neil’s face before he came up with a response.