Til Dirt Do Us Part (A Local Foods Mystery) (8 page)

“No, a male wasn’t part of the package.”

Their dinners arrived, and they ate in silence for a few moments.

“Where’d you say those chickens were rescued from?”

Cam hadn’t said, on purpose. “You’re not going to like it. They were Bev Montgomery’s. The board of health was about to destroy them. I guess she wasn’t feeding or cleaning them. They’re skinny and look miserable. I went over there to help pick them up. Bev wasn’t happy about it.”

“My poor friend Beverly. She has gone through so many hurtful times. And now she’s hurting pin-brained birds.” He put his fork down. “I wonder what I can do to help her. She was an angel to us when Marie was dying. I believe I told you. An angel.”

“Maybe she should sell her farm and come live here,” Cam said. “I’ll bet her property would go for a lot. She’s all alone on the property now.”

“Why, that might be just the ticket, Cameron.” Albert’s eyes lit up.

“I wonder if she’s old enough, though.”

Albert took a sip of his wine. “She’s over sixty. Which qualifies her for independent living. And the assisted living area doesn’t have a lower age limit.”

“Do you think she’d do it?” Cam said. “I mean, sell the farm and move here?”

“She’s stubborn, but I do believe she is also down and out. I’ll pay her a visit sometime soon and see if I can convince her. Now, what else is new with you?”

“Well, my programmer friend Tina says my name for the farm is already out of date. Nobody uses the C++ programming language anymore. I’m thinking of changing it back to Attic Hill Farm. What do you think?”

“I’d be pleased with that. It was the farm’s name for two centuries before you changed it. I wanted it to be your enterprise, my dear. That’s why I didn’t object. And it is your farm, but I’ll admit I’m happy to hear the old name will be restored.”

“Good. I’ll do it.”

“Now, what about the fair? You are going to enter the vegetable competition, like we talked about, aren’t you?”

“I’m a beginner.” Cam shook her head. “How could I win a prize against veteran farmers?”

Albert patted her hand and kept his age-spotted, knobby hand on hers. “My dear, your Sun Golds are the best tomato I have ever tasted, bar none, including all those so-called heirlooms, which used to be the only kinds we grew. And your garlic braids? You used big, plump cloves, braided them expertly, and they’re organic. Nobody else will come close.” Cam had brought one over to show him a month earlier.

“I had a lot of fun learning how to braid garlic. If I hadn’t gone to the organic farming summer conference in August, I couldn’t have done it. A farmer was sitting there one afternoon, braiding and teaching anybody who wanted to learn. She was getting her own work done and sharing knowledge at the same time.”

Albert nodded.

“So I thought I’d give braiding the soft-neck garlic a try. They do look pretty nice, don’t they?”

“And you’ll take them to the Middleford Fair?” Albert leaned toward her, as if trying to pull the yes out of her. “It will be great experience in any case, and you’ll get a sense of who else is out there. Remember, too, a blue ribbon is a perfect marketing tool.”

“You talked me into it.” She smiled at the man who’d spent his summers teaching her about growing without her even knowing she was in class. And who was now her marketing guru, as well. “I already printed out the entry forms. I’ll head down there Tuesday morning. Wish me luck.”

“Break a leg, Farmer Flaherty.”

“I never heard what your news was. Tell me.” Cam patted Albert’s hand.

He was about to speak when their server appeared at Albert’s side, a high-school girl in tight black pants and a white button-down shirt barely covering her midsection. She cleared their plates onto a tray. “Can I get you some dessert tonight?” She proffered a small menu card.

“Cameron?”

“Sure.” The assisted-living facility had a remarkably capable baker on staff, and Cam never turned down dessert here. “I’ll have the apple tart with vanilla ice cream. Those are local apples, aren’t they?”
Listen to me,
she thought.
Those locavores have converted me.

The girl caught herself halfway through rolling her eyes. “I’ll check for you. Do you still want it if they aren’t local?”

“Actually, I do. But I’d like to know, okay?”

Albert ordered the sugar-free ice cream. “Damn diabetes.”

“You’ve never been overweight,” Cam said. “How did you get diabetes?”

“It’s hereditary. I inherited a curse from my father, is how I see it. That’s how I lost my foot, you know.”

Cam nodded. Their desserts arrived, with an aside from the server that the apples were from Cider Valley Farm. Cam thanked her.

“Now, then. Time for the news I heard yesterday.” Albert cocked his head. “Howard Fisher has run into a spot of bad luck lately, I’ve heard.”

Cam raised her eyebrows. “What kind of spot?”

“He’s not been managing his business well. He might lose the land to foreclosure.”

“That’d be so sad. Are people just not buying pork anymore?”

“Perhaps. Or maybe he’s just a bad businessman. If he loses the land, he loses everything.”

Cam whistled. “How’d you hear that?”

“Our friend Bev. She and I, we like to keep up on the goings-on in town.”

C
am checked the hens when she arrived home. The coop door was latched, and all seemed well under a waxing moon that was already past quarter full. A screech owl called from the woods with its eerie whistling whinny, and dewy grass dampened her sneakers as she headed for the house.

She ushered Preston in and locked the door. Providing a new home and nourishment for hens that had been on their way to the executioner’s block had been a great idea. She hoped they wouldn’t add too much to her workload. But even so, they would be an asset to the farm. She would have a great source of nitrogen for compost and could offer eggs for sale whenever the hens started laying again.

The success of the hen rescue turned her thoughts to Howard’s pigs. Maybe they needed a rescue mission, too. The scope of that would be totally different, given the size of the rescuees and the demands of an appropriate living space.

Cam sat at the computer to check her e-mail before bed. She also looked at the Comments page on the farm’s Web site. An inflammatory comment a few months earlier had forced her to moderate the messages, and she saw one message sitting in the administrator’s mailbox. She opened it and frowned.

Well, that one was going straight into the trash. No, on second thought, she saved it to her own e-mail and forwarded it to Pappas, with a note explaining Project Rescue Chicken. The comment qualified as a threat in her mind, whether he thought so or not. On further contemplation, Cam forwarded it to the Westbury police, too. It didn’t really pertain to the murder, or so she hoped, but was a threat nonetheless.

The sun was creeping over the top of the woods when Cam opened the coop door the next morning.

“Good morning, ladies. Come on out whenever you’re ready.” She lifted the feeder and the water receptacle and carried them down the ramp, setting them at the edge of the fencing where they would be shaded at least half the day.

One groggy hen stumbled down the ramp, making Cam wonder if she should have brought out a tray of tiny espresso cups, instead. She replenished the food from the sack in the barn and carried the water basin to the hose. The girls had made a dent in the contents of both vessels overnight. As Cam herself would have if she’d been continually underfed.

The rest of the hens made their way toward the fresh food. Cam laughed at the sounds they made, a cross between crooning and gargling. She hadn’t noticed their vocalizations the day before. Maybe they’d been too shell-shocked to talk. One with a goofy topknot stuck her neck out and ran straight toward Cam, then slowed and made the same funny sounds, which were nothing like the
bock-bock-bock
one heard in popular culture.

Cam’s phone rang in her pocket. She checked the display. Alexandra.

Cam greeted her. “What’s up?”

“I can’t stop thinking about those pigs at Howard’s. I want to see for myself. But I don’t really want to go alone. He’s kind of a creepy guy.”

Cam agreed but added, “Are you sure you want to confront him?”

“I don’t want to confront him, exactly, but I feel like I need to see the animals. Do you have time to go over there with me?”

“I don’t know. We’ll need some kind of story. We can’t just show up for no reason.”

“Can we get there through the woods? I sure don’t need to talk with Howard.”

Cam checked her watch. “I don’t have time to go for a hike. But I do need to go out to drop the truck at Sim’s garage for service, anyway. I’ll drive us over there for just a minute. We’ll think of some excuse when we see him. He and I are both farmers, after all.”

Alexandra said she’d meet Cam in the parking lot of the Food Mart in ten minutes, and they disconnected.

No way would she be willing to host rescue pigs right now, but Alexandra deserved to know the truth about the swine’s living situation at the farm. And Cam wouldn’t mind getting a good look at Howard’s pigs, too.

At five before eight, they pulled into Howard’s drive, if one could call a rutted gravel path a drive. White housewrap covered the left wall of the mid-nineteenth-century farmhouse, one corner flapping in the wind. Paint had chipped off the clapboards on the front. But tidy blue flower boxes hung from the railings of the side porch, with well-tended red geraniums reaching for the sun and bright nasturtiums spilling out like a waterfall. The lawn was mowed and free of leaves, despite a towering sugar maple nearby.

The drive widened as it curved around behind the house, so Cam drove on. She wasn’t quite sure where the farm area was but assumed she’d run across it. Sure enough, some yards back, the drive ended at an open area ringed by outbuildings and a ramshackle barn. She parked the truck.

“What are we going to tell him we’re here for?” Alexandra asked. She didn’t sound worried, simply curious.

“I’ll think of something. Let’s go exploring.” She hoped this wasn’t too crazy of an idea.

They climbed out of the cab. Woods lined the left side of the area, and cornfields stretched out as far as Cam could see behind the outbuildings and the barn. Pork and corn seemed to be the extent of Howard’s enterprise. Plus, he sold rhubarb in the springtime, she remembered.

No one seemed to be around. An old dog moseyed up without barking, sniffed at Alexandra, and ambled toward the house. It was early, but Cam had never yet met a farmer who wasn’t already hard at work at eight in the morning.

“Hello?” she called. “Howard?” No answer. She thought she heard faint snorting sounds from the farthest outbuilding, so she and Alexandra headed that way. They picked their way along a dirt path around the left side of the building, which was more a collection of random boards and pieces of corrugated sheet metal cobbled together than a planned structure. The air smelled of rotten eggs and ammonia.

The back of the building was open to the air but was ringed with yellow police tape. Three fenced areas extended several yards back from the roofed area. In one, a sow suckled what looked like a dozen piglets, two of which seemed excluded and kept climbing over the others to get to a teat.

Alexandra drew in her breath sharply and moved toward the nearest of the other two enclosures.

Five or six pigs laid about in the mud in each area, but these were not the fat animals one saw in discussions of “the other white meat” or in children’s books about farm animals. These beasts, while not exactly thin, looked mangy, with lackluster eyes and spots on their skin. To Cam’s inexpert gaze, they appeared malnourished. She felt like she was seeing the hens from the day before but writ large. She covered her mouth and nose to filter the stench.

Then it slammed her. These were the pigs that had chewed on Irene’s legs. Cam’s bile rose, and she had to swallow hard. She looked at the back part of the fence. Even though the police had left the tape up, they must have already examined the fence. She didn’t need to. It was bad enough imagining the scene. She didn’t know if Irene had been dead and dumped into the sty, if she’d been stunned and pushed in, or if she somehow . . . Cam shook her head. It was no use conjecturing, and it wasn’t her job under any scenario. Wind shook the tops of the tall maples and chilled her. She took a deep breath.

“It’s criminal what he’s doing to these poor animals.” Alexandra wiped away a tear.

Cam nodded. “And they never would have attacked Irene if they weren’t so hungry.”

“Wait’ll I tell DJ about this. He’s really going to be steamed.” The sadness on her face turned to a titanium resolve. “The police must have been here. I wonder why they didn’t report Howard for animal cruelty?”

“Maybe they did. Bureaucracy can take a while. Let’s get going.”

They made their way back to the truck. Cam completed two parts of her three-part turnaround and had her eyes on the gearshift.

“Uh-oh, here’s trouble,” Alexandra said.

Cam heard a bang on the hood of the truck. She looked up to see Howard Fisher’s angry face in the driver’s-side window. She put the truck in neutral and rolled down the window.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing on my property?” The spittle flew from his mouth, and he waved a rifle in his left hand.

Cam recoiled and tilted her head inward. “Hey, Howard.” She attempted a smile. Alexandra gave a little wave from the passenger seat.

“Yeah. Good morning.” His gruff voice edged toward friendliness. “What do you want?” He lowered the rifle.

“I’ve been so sad about Irene’s death. You must be, too, and I wanted to see how you were doing. I called out when we drove in, but nobody was around. I assumed you were out back, feeding the pigs or something.” Cam tried to smile.

“We’re a little short on feed just now.” Howard’s brows knit together, and his eyes sagged. “But they get plenty of slops. Oh, they’re fine. Very happy pigs, you might say.” He mustered a cheery tone with what looked like difficulty.

“Well, great.” Cam cleared her throat. “You’re carrying a gun. Do you have problems with trespassers?”

“Maybe.” His eyes shifted toward the trees to the left, behind the outbuildings, and back to Cam. “You know the police are saying it was murder, don’t you? Mrs. Burr’s death wasn’t no accident.”

“I guess I did hear something about that.”

“If you ask me, it was that stepson of hers. He wants her money.”

“Really? Bobby wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

Howard snorted.

“Hey, Howard.” Alexandra leaned toward the driver’s-side window. “I heard your land is being foreclosed on. It would be awful for you to lose your farm.”

He glared at the younger woman. “Where’d you hear that? I’m not losing the farm.” His voice shook as he shouted. “You tell whoever said so, they’re out of their consarned mind, you hear me?” The rifle came up again.

Cam decided this would be a good time for them to get out of there. “Sure. Gotta run,” she said, putting the truck in gear. “Didn’t mean to alarm you.”

He looked like he might have been about to speak again, but Cam smiled as she drove away, elevating her hand in a wave.

“He’s one unstable dude,” Alexandra said. “I’m sorry to drag you into that, Cam.”

“It’s okay.”

“I wish there was something we could do for the animals.” Alexandra shook her head.

“Me, too.” Cam swung onto Main Street. “But you should know, I’m not ready to host starving pigs, as well as chickens. At least not yet.”

“I know.”

“How’d you hear about his land being threatened?”

Alexandra threw a hand up. “It’s all over town. One of the joys of living in a village, I guess.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way to the Food Mart, where Alexandra got out and headed for her bicycle.

When she arrived at SK Foreign Auto, Cam sat for a moment in the cab. Things hadn’t quite gotten ugly at Howard’s, but an angry man with a rifle in his hand? Something she could do without.

Sim sauntered out, wiping her hands on a red rag. “Ready for a spin on the bike?”

Cam halted halfway out of the cab. “On the bike?”

“You’re leaving the truck for the day, right?”

Cam said that she was and that she would walk home. “It’s only two miles. I can use the exercise.”

“I’ll give you a lift. Ever ride bitch on a Harley before?”

“What?”

Sim laughed. “You know. Shotgun. On the back.”

Cam shook her head. She wasn’t totally sure she wanted to, either.

“It’s fun. Come on. I have a spare helmet. All you have to remember is to lean into the curves. Don’t fight them.”

Cam handed over the keys to the truck as she wondered what she’d gotten herself into. She slung her handbag over her head and across one shoulder.

Sim handed her a heavy helmet. “I don’t believe in those half helmets dudes wear. They think I’m a wuss for wearing true protective gear. I think they’re idiots for not protecting their brains.”

Cam dutifully fastened the helmet while Sim put on her own. The thick foam liner pressed in on her forehead, and the strap rubbed against her throat. She fumbled with the strap adjustment but couldn’t loosen it. She was glad the helmet didn’t have a plastic visor covering her eyes.

Sim pulled on leather gloves before climbing onto the hefty bike painted with a bold red lightning strike on the back. She swung it off its kickstand and motioned Cam to get on behind her.

“Put your arms around my waist,” Sim called through the helmet. “I promise I won’t lust after you.”

Cam set her left foot on what looked like a rear footrest, threw her right leg over the back, and set each hand on Sim’s leather-clad waist. Sim fired up the machine and eased onto Main Street.

When they turned onto Attic Hill Road, Cam leaned into the curve. Sim sped up. The engine roared in Cam’s ears and vibrated beneath her. She hung on to Sim’s waist with increasingly cold fingers. The familiar fields and woods dotted with houses sped by in a blur. And Cam’s own familiar house sped by, too. Where was Sim taking her? Why had she ever agreed to this crazy idea?

They turned again, onto Moulton Street, and raced around the reservoir. They sped over to Indian Pond Road, charged up the steep Middle Street hill, and flew down the other side, narrowly missing a passing Jeep. They finally rejoined Attic Hill Road.

The engine slowed as Sim turned into Cam’s drive and came to a stop.

Cam dismounted and removed the helmet with shaky hands. “That was quite a ride.”

Sim stayed on the bike but flipped up her face shield with a wicked smile. “Was that fun or what?”

“I guess. I don’t think it’s really my thing.”

“I love speed.” Sim looked into the distance like she’d rather be out on a highway in Wyoming, going ninety miles an hour. “And I had to distract myself from thinking about Bobby.”

“Did you test-drive Irene’s Jag like that? I’ll bet they go pretty fast.” Cam actually had no idea how Jaguars drove. But Lucinda had put the idea of Sim as a suspect in her mind, and Cam wanted to see what she had to say about Irene.

“That witch? She accused me of taking it on joyrides. I told her I had to take it out on the road after a tune-up. There’s no substitute for a road test to make sure a car is running smooth. But she hated the idea of anybody else driving her baby. She even threatened to charge me for every tenth of a mile I drove it.”