Farmed and Dangerous (20 page)

“They totally love your vegetables.” The girl grinned.

“And you don't?” Ellie cocked her head at her friend.

Ray cast a glance at Cam. “You know, with them it's, like, kale this, kale that. They'd totally eat kale ice cream if they could. I mean, really?”

Cam laughed. “Me, I'd draw the line at that one.” She stood. “I'll let you girls visit. Ellie, I'll be in the kitchen for a while.”

“For shizzle,” Ellie said with a wave.

Cam walked away, remembering when she and Ruth would utter a piece of teen slang that left adults bewildered. Yup, she was an adult now.

Maybe she should look for Ginger and have it out with her. But in the dim emergency lighting, the thought of finding Ginger alone made her uneasy. No, that could wait. She'd had enough close calls for one day. For one lifetime.

C
am joined Oscar and Rosemary in the kitchen again. Rosemary now occupied the chair Cam had sat in, and Oscar perched on the counter, next to the bottle of brandy. Rosemary gestured to a stool.

“Park your derriere, Cam. But first help yourself.” She pointed to the bottle.

Cam poured a couple of glugs of brandy into her empty coffee mug, then eased herself onto the stool. She lifted the mug.

“Cheers.” She took a small sip of the straight brandy. A trace of her sweet coffee came with it, making it taste like Kahlúa. “Here's to a safe, uncomplicated life.” Maybe she could finally relax.

“And here's to electricity and no more snow this winter.” Rosemary sipped from her own mug.

“I'll drink to all of that.” Oscar reached his mug over to tap Cam's.

“Boy, same here. While I was walking around the building, I kept thinking I should have rammed the residence with Ginger Montgomery's Lexus.” Cam giggled. “Serve her right for leaving me locked out in a storm.”

Oscar looked at Cam. “That takes balls to even come up with the idea of it.”

“I'm glad now I didn't.” She snorted. “But can you imagine her reaction?”

Oscar sipped from his mug and eyed Rosemary. “Hey, Cookie. What was up with Richard taking Bev out for all those meals, anyway?”

“Don't call me Cookie.” Rosemary shook her head, her hair waving along. “I don't know. He didn't want to talk with me about it.”

“He took Bev out a lot?” Cam asked.

Oscar nodded. “Yup.”

Cam cocked an ear at a high-pitched whistle. “It's still howling out there.”

“Do you have farm animals, Cam?” Oscar asked. “How do they do in this cold and snow?”

“Only chickens and a cat.” A sharp pang struck Cam. She pictured the hens and Preston. She was warm, mostly, and comfortable. They were alone and cold, with no fresh food or water. “So far they've survived, except for one extremely dumb chicken who stood outside for too long earlier this week and froze herself to death.”

Rosemary laughed, her earrings swinging. She twirled her flashlight around the room, drawing circles on the walls and the ceiling. When the light passed over Cam, Rosemary stopped and shone it on the side of her head. “Looks like you lost an earring.”

Cam brought her hands to her ears. “Oh, no.” Sure enough, one ear was empty of decoration. “Well, shoot. Those were my favorite eggplants.” She fingered the remaining one, a miniature purple vegetable shaped like a real eggplant. Ruth had given her the pair as a farm-warming gift when Cam took over Uncle Albert's business.

“So you need a new pair.” Rosemary stood and walked to a closet at the far end of the room. She returned with a zippered bag made of an Asian-looking black damask. She opened it on a clear section of the countertop and laid out several pairs of earrings. “Shop to your heart's content.” She waved Cam over, then handed her the flashlight.

“I don't know. I'm pretty short on cash these days.” She peered at them. Each pair was unique, but they all contained the same three metals as the earrings Cam had admired earlier.

“They'd be good on you, especially the long, dangling ones with your short hair,” Rosemary urged.

“They're lovely. You are very talented.” Cam fingered each set. The earrings were hooked into small squares of cardboard bearing a swooping logo that included the initials RC and a tiny silver hammer. “How much are they?”

“For you, twenty. I sell them for up to forty at craft fairs.”

Cam sighed and picked up a pair with two long strands each. “I like these a lot. Let me get my wallet. It's in my bag out in the common room.”

“Pay me whenever. I know where to find you.”

“Thanks.” Cam slid her remaining earring out. She fumbled while inserting the new ones. “My fingers haven't yet recovered from being out in the cold.” She faced Oscar. “What do you think?”

“Like I can see them? All women look great in the dark, earrings or no earrings.”

Cam laughed, sticking the remaining eggplant in her pocket before she plopped on her stool again. This all felt surreal. They were trapped inside, with essentially no power in a dangerous blizzard, and she was buying earrings.

“Hey, Oscar, who is the house cleaner who looks sort of Slavic?” Cam asked. “High cheekbones, blond hair? I talked to her a day or two ago, but I didn't catch her name.”

“Oh, that's Tash. Short for Natasha. Her parents are Russian, but she's trying to ignore her heritage.” He lifted one shoulder. “It happens. What did you talk with her about?”

“I'm still trying to figure out what happened to my uncle, how he fell. I thought she might have seen somebody go into his room.”

“And what did she say?” Rosemary asked. She faced away from Cam and put the rest of the earrings back into the bag.

“She seemed nervous and said she didn't see anything. She wouldn't talk to me after that.”

“She's all right,” Oscar said. “But I'm not sure if she's documented. Her parents might have brought her here as a young child. Jim Cooper isn't real careful with the cleaning crew.”

Cam sipped the brandy again. “So she doesn't want to talk for fear her status will be exposed.” She frowned.

“Possible,” Oscar said.

Tash had been fine when Cam first spoke to her, though. Only when Cam asked her if she'd seen someone near her uncle's room did the young woman act strangely.

 

Cam glanced up at the common room clock. Nine o'clock. Would this storm ever end? Ellie and Ray were the only people in the room with her. The girls slept with their heads at opposite ends of a long couch. Rosemary had fixed sandwiches for Cam and Oscar in the kitchen. She'd made a couple more, which Cam had carried out to the girls, who'd eaten and then fallen asleep. Ellie's plate sat on the end table, half a pickle abandoned on a wilted leaf of lettuce.

A care provider pushed a cart slowly down the hallway, its wheels murmuring along the carpet. Yawning, Cam picked up the
Daily News
from the table next to her armchair. The brandy had relaxed her, but not enough that she wanted to snooze. What she wanted was to go home.

She leaned toward the emergency light and peered at the paper. It was folded open to the obituary page. The top item was about Ida Lacey, age ninety-three. The story said she had died of natural causes at Moran Manor.
Good.
At least she hadn't been poisoned by Cam's organic produce. She flipped idly through the rest of the section and then refolded the paper so the front page was on top.

The headline on the first page made her sit up straight:
MORAN MANOR RESIDENT POISONED
. So the poison had become public knowledge. She carried the paper over to the spot where the most light shone from the emergency bulbs. The authorities were still searching for the killer, the article said. When she got to the words
cyanide salts,
she paused. She'd read mysteries where that had been the murder weapon. The death was fast and painful, at least in fiction. Was it also in real life?
Poor Bev.
Cam read every word of the article.

But where would someone obtain cyanide? Everybody knew it could be fatally toxic, didn't they? She thought she'd read that there was a legal use for the poison, though, even now. Was it in painting? She wasn't able to research it on the Internet, because cell coverage had gone out. She assumed Pete and his team had checked out where a person could obtain cyanide legally. And, of course, Pete wouldn't have told her.

She wandered out to the lobby and pressed her face against the glass door to the outside. The snow still swirled, as if a mad giant waved a snow globe in the air. A huge drift curved up and over where Cam knew a low wall defined the walkway. She tapped her foot. If she couldn't get out of here, what could she do to keep from going stir crazy? Play Scrabble against herself? She snapped her fingers. She knew where she could read about legal uses for cyanide, despite the lack of electricity.

A moment later she entered the library upstairs, which housed not only a dictionary but also an encyclopedia, which a resident must have donated. She was sure it hadn't been published in this decade, and wondered whether they even printed encyclopedias anymore. But she bet that information about cyanide hadn't changed all that much even in the past fifty years.

She peered at the spines of the encyclopedia and drew out the C–D volume. She carried it out into the hallway, where more light illuminated the space, and sank down to the floor, sitting cross-legged. She found the “cyanide” entry and began to read. A few minutes later she closed the book, raised her knees, and rested her arms on them. The article said that it was used to kill ants. And was an anticaking agent for salt. In New Zealand they turned to it to kill pesky mammals. Jewelers used cyanide salts to clean metals. Photographers utilized the chemical in darkrooms. With real film, which was rapidly becoming obsolete but wasn't at the time the encyclopedia was published. She opened the volume again and checked the copyright. 1998. Not ancient, but before digital cameras took over the photography market, for sure. She whistled when she read the last use for cyanide: to increase plant germination. She was horrified to imagine bringing a toxic poison onto her farm to make sure all her seeds sprouted.

She scanned the cyanide entry again. Frank Jackson had emphasized to Jim that he used real film for his art. Like that fall portrait, with its sepia tint. He could have brought cyanide salts to Moran Manor and added a portion to Bev's dinner. But how? And when? It could have been before Ellie delivered her plate, if the plates were left unattended in the kitchen or on a delivery rack, or after in Bev's room. The article described the classic bitter almond scent of the toxin. But it also said that some people weren't able to smell it. Even if Bev could perceive it, the stew could have masked the smell.

Cam's eyes flew wide open. The apple cake recipe she'd provided to Rosemary featured almonds. No wonder Jim suspected Cam. Even if Bev had caught a whiff, she would have assumed the smell came from the dessert. Cam shook her head a little. Her new earrings clinked softly.

The earrings Rosemary had made. The jeweler Rosemary. Who'd also sprinkled the salad with almonds.

“No,” Cam scolded herself aloud. “Rosemary had no reason to kill Bev. She barely knew her. At least I think she didn't. It had to be Frank.” If only she could call Pete.

She heard a soft sound around the corner from where she sat. A light click followed the noise. The shadows in the corners were instantly darker, more menacing. Her heart raced. She rose and tiptoed into the library. She slid the volume back into its slot on the shelf. Time to get downstairs, where there would be safety in numbers. If two slumbering teen girls counted as safety.

R
ustling. A scrabbling sound.

Cam awoke from a fitful sleep but kept her eyes shut. Her height prevented her from stretching out on the remaining couch in the common room, and she'd wedged herself into it. Her right foot felt numb where it hung over the far armrest. Her left leg sprawled on the floor, and her neck hurt from the angle at which her head rested. She didn't know what the time was. She felt like she must have slept for at least a couple of hours, which made it near midnight. Had she heard a noise, or had it been part of the dream she was having?

She heard the rustling sound again. She opened her eyes and froze. That was no dream. Could a rodent be prowling the residence? Or a person up to no good? Someone cursed under their breath directly behind her head. A rodent who spoke English, then.

Cam sat up and turned sharply toward the sound in a quick move. The crick in her neck pierced her with pain. Ginger Montgomery was bent over the end table next to the couch.

“Ginger,” Cam said in a harsh whisper. “What are you doing?”

Ginger's hand flew out of the bag Cam used as a pocketbook, which sat on the small table at the end of the couch.

Ginger straightened. She folded her arms and said in a low voice, “Nothing.” She wore what appeared in the dim light to be sweatpants and a man's shirt, which hung halfway to her knees.

Cam stood, trying not to move her head, and grabbed her bag. “What do you mean, nothing? You were searching my bag.” Needles jabbed her right foot. She stomped it a couple of times, trying to bring feeling into it.

“I was not.” Ginger cleared her throat, then spoke in a low voice. “I can't find my purse. I thought I might have left it out here.”

“Right.” Cam snorted. “You carry a great big cream-colored leather bag. Looks like a designer one. I've seen it. Mine is a brown canvas messenger bag with crows on it.” She clutched the bag, its flap thrown open, close to her. The corner of a piece of paper stuck out. Cam grabbed it, wondering if Ginger had put it there, but the paper was just an old receipt.

“It's dark in here.” Ginger shot a glance at the emergency bulbs, whose feeble light didn't quite extend to their corner of the room.

“Well, it's not your pocketbook.” Why were the lights so much dimmer than earlier in the night? Cam hoped the generator wasn't running out of gas. But the lights in the hallway were still on. “Why were you in my bag?”

“You're mistaken, Cam.”

“No, I'm not.” She kept her gaze on the other woman.

“Listen, since we're talking, you can stop snooping into other people's business,” Ginger snapped.

“Don't change the subject. You're the one who just went through
my
purse.”

“I heard you were asking around about me.”

“Hey, if your name comes up in conversation, that's not exactly snooping.” Cam shoved the receipt farther down into her bag and slung it on her shoulder.

“That's not how it went down according to my friend. Who heard you talking about me in the Food Mart and called me.”

“Eddie doesn't seem to think much of your substandard approach to building. It's not snooping to talk about the effect a local project has on the town.” Cam tried to keep her voice down. She didn't want to wake the teenagers across the room.

“You don't know anything about it. And for all I know, he slipped you some false information, a doctored-up photograph, or something.”

“Well, he didn't. But here's something I do know about.” Cam cocked her head and then winced at the pain from the crick in her neck. “A few hours ago, when you asked me to get your sheet music, I got locked out. In the freaking blizzard. Why didn't you search for me?”

Ginger opened both hands outward. “How did I know you were locked out? I didn't see you leave the building. Maybe you decided you didn't feel like getting my music, after all. Jim went out and called for you, but you weren't anywhere.”

“I was halfway around the building by then. In a blizzard, I might remind you. He didn't come looking very soon.”

“Well, he eventually located some music another performer had left behind, which I played from.”

“What's going on, Cam?” Ellie's sleepy voice sounded from the other couch.

“Nothing, Ellie,” Cam said. “Power's still out. You might as well go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” Ellie mumbled.

Ginger turned toward the doorway.

“Wait a minute, Ginger. I'm serious,” Cam said. “Why were you digging in my bag?”

Jim Cooper appeared in the lobby, outside his office. He stood under one of the emergency lights. His hair stood on end like a cartoon character's, and he scratched the back of his head.

Ginger glanced at him and then at Cam again. Despite Ginger being backlit, Cam caught her raising one eyebrow.

“Just looking for dirt. You're a farmer. You should understand that.” She strolled toward Jim and hooked her arm through his before they disappeared into his office. In the quiet, Cam heard the door click shut behind them.

Cam stretched her feet out on the coffee table and opened her bag on her lap. She didn't believe for a minute that Ginger had mistaken her canvas messenger bag for her own leather bag. Ginger had been searching for something in it. But what could Cam have that Ginger would want? Unless she really thought that Eddie might have given Cam some kind of proof about Ginger's unethical building practices.

Cam started removing items from her bag one by one. She laid her lip gloss and comb on the couch. Her cell phone. Her wallet. A pen and a stub of a pencil. The scrunched-up receipt for thirty pounds of seed potatoes from the Agway. Her farm checkbook and her personal checkbook. More lip gloss. Nail file. The slim metal case that held farm business cards. A nearly empty pack of sugar-free gum. A few other just-in-case items. She ran her hand along the bottom of the bag's interior and came up with a handful of coins and something soft, which turned out to be a piece of unchewed gum that had escaped its wrapper. She wrapped it in one of the tissues, then upended the bag and shook it. Only dust and a few crumbs from an old granola bar emerged.

She stared at the collection. The previous spring she'd unwittingly brought a bugging device into her house. She wasn't about to be duped like that again. If Ginger had planted a bug in Cam's bag, she hadn't found it. A listening device was a silly notion, anyway. Or was it? If Ginger was evil enough to kill her own mother, or if she was involved in the crime somehow, surely she wouldn't balk at trying to find out surreptitiously how much Cam knew or suspected about her.

 

No matter how she rearranged herself on the couch, Cam couldn't fall asleep again. Her neck hurt, her knees ached, and her stomach felt unsettled. Or it could be the interaction with Ginger that was keeping her awake. She sat up, hearing a buzzing noise. Her eyes widened while she scrabbled in her purse for her phone. It showed service bars again. She rose and peered out a window. The snow had stopped. Finally. She wandered back to her couch. The green light on her phone blinked. She had a message from Pete. Several of them, the most recent from twenty minutes ago. She pressed his number. The clock display on her phone read 1:15 a.m., but he obviously was still up.

When he answered, she greeted him. “What's going on?”

“Are you all right? I've been trying to reach you. You didn't pick up at home.” The worry in his voice came over the line like a yellow flag.

“I'm fine. Stir crazy but fine. I'm stuck at Moran Manor. A bunch of us are stuck here, actually. Including Ellie.”

He exhaled. “I'm snowed in, as well. My little street is the last to get plowed, and since I was off duty, anyway, I didn't think getting me out was an emergency that merited taking state vehicles away from all the real emergencies around the area. But I was worried about you.”

“We lost cell service here earlier in the evening. I was visiting Albert, and I didn't leave in time. When Ellie asked me for a ride home, we couldn't even get out of the parking lot.”

“Mmm. I miss you,” Pete said in a low voice.

Cam shut her eyes for a moment. She wished she were snuggled on a couch next to Pete, with that sexy voice in her ear in person. She opened her eyes and cleared her throat.

“I miss you, too. And I would really like to get out of here. I've been trying to sleep on a sofa, but it's terribly uncomfortable.”

“Poor dear. And me in my nice warm double bed.” He laughed low and throatily.

“Stop it now. Listen, that text from Ellie? Ellie told me she saw Frank Jackson coming out of Bev's room. And that he threatened Bev. He told her if she didn't give him the money, she would be killed.”

Pete didn't speak for a moment, and Cam thought she heard a pencil scratching on paper. “That's serious. Why didn't she tell me earlier?”

Cam told him what Ellie had said. “She feels bad about it.”

“I surely hope Jackson isn't also trapped there tonight.”

“No, thank goodness. As far as I know.” Or was he here? She hadn't seen him anywhere earlier and couldn't think of why he would be at the residence. That didn't mean he wasn't. “I was locked out in the blizzard earlier.”

“What? You're kidding.”

“I'm not kidding. I found my way around to the rear door, which was unlocked, but being out there terrified me.”

“Oh, Cam.” Pete sounded anguished. “Are you all right?”

“I am. Took me a while to warm up. I'll give you all the gory details later.” Should she tell him about Ginger going through her handbag? She decided to save that news. Nothing had happened, after all, although she was glad Ginger hadn't reappeared from Jim's office, where she must be occupying his long, cushy leather sofa with him.

“You could have—”

“I'm fine. Don't worry. Listen, I learned a few more things, too. Ginger apparently cheats on the buildings she puts up. Oh, and Richard has a gambling problem.”

“Whoa, whoa. You learned all this tonight at the residence there?”

Cam laughed. “No. DJ and Alexandra each happened to tell me some stuff. Richard is Alexandra's friend's stepfather. Or ex-stepfather. Her friend's name is Hannah.”

“We were investigating Broadhurst's gambling. Remember, we talked about that yesterday? But it's good to get it confirmed. See if you can get the friend's last name, will you?”

“Sure. And DJ's brother Eddie works construction for Ginger,” Cam went on. “Or did. He says it's nearly criminal, what she does.”

“Also good to know. What's DJ's last name?”

“Johns. His brother is Eddie Johns.”

“Good. What's also good is that the weather station says the storm is blowing out to sea,” Pete said. “We should all be able to get out tomorrow morning. I mean, this morning.”

“I hope my animals survived the storm. And Preston.”

“Dasha can't wait to get out for a long walk, too.” Pete cleared his throat. “I haven't been able to sleep, thinking about you,” he said in a husky voice.

“Because I'm a person of interest?”

“Of interest to me personally. This has been killing me, this week. You know that, don't you?”

“You didn't exactly make that clear to me.”

“I couldn't. I wasn't even supposed to be talking with you. But you're in the clear now, as I already told you. We're closing in on the murderer.”

“Who is it?”

Pete didn't speak.

“Yeah, you can't tell me.” Cam yawned. “I might be able to sleep now, though. See you tomorrow sometime?”

“I hope so. I'm on duty again.” He didn't speak for a moment.

The large clock on the wall ticked, as if reassuring Cam that life would someday return to normal.

“Why don't you call me when you get home?” Pete asked. “If you don't mind, I'll stop by to say hello and leave Dasha with you for the day.”

“No problem. I'd love to see you. And him. Get some sleep yourself.”

“I'll be dreaming—” His voice cut out, and then she heard him again. “Got a work call. Later.” He disconnected.

Cam sat with the phone in her hand. She hadn't had a chance to tell him about Rosemary and Richard. She also hadn't told him what she'd learned about the legal uses of cyanide salts. But surely a detective already knew that. She stretched out and fell asleep, still clutching her phone.