A Slaying in the Orchard Page 3

  At the Pear Stirpes Orchard stall, JT was, as Cary had said, talking too much. He was earnestly holding forth to a tanned blonde woman who looked like she could have been the inspiration for the Beach Boys' "California Girl" if it hadn't been written a couple of generations before she was born.

  JT and the customer were near the back of the space, which was lined with coolers containing assorted beverages from the orchard. I'd met the woman before while having dinner at the Smugglers' Tavern, where she worked as a bartender. Lilly Waters looked like she'd much rather be over on the beach with a surfboard in her arms. And not just because JT was droning on about distillation, as he tended to do. The way Lilly peered suspiciously at the ground as if she expected something to burst out and grab her, and the frequency with which she glanced through the open back of the market stall and beyond the historical garden there, suggested that she was considering leaping over the coolers to escape to the beach. About the only thing stopping her, I suspected, was that she wasn't sure what might be lurking in the grass there in the way of spiders and insects. Even in the relatively short time she'd been behind the bar at the Smugglers' Tavern, she'd become notorious for her loathing of creepy-crawly things.

  Lilly finally caught sight of me. "Oh, thank goodness you're here. Would you please tell this young man that I really don't care about how the stuff is made? I just want to know when the pear cider will be available again. Some of my customers have been asking for it, and it's always good for tips if I can give them some inside information."

  "I already told you it's not pear cider," JT said irritably. "It's perry when it's made from pears."

  "Right," Lilly said in the tone reserved for humoring a crazy person.

  JT wasn't actually crazy, just a tad obsessive about the subtleties of fermentation and distillation.

  "So, I'm wondering when the perry will be available again. It really is popular."

  "You can't rush things," JT said, somewhat appeased by the compliment to the beverage of his heart. "First, you need to—"

  I'd heard the lecture before and knew it could go on for hours, so I cut him off. "Lilly doesn't have time today to hear all about the process. She just needs a delivery date." I assured her, "I'll let Merle know you were asking about it, and I'm sure he'll keep you up to date on how the supply is coming along. Probably not today though. He may not make it to the market this afternoon." I recalled how slow and thorough Detective Ohlsen could be while interviewing witnesses. "Maybe not tomorrow either."

  "There's no rush," Lilly said. "I understand he's busy. I heard about the dead body at his place."

  "I found it," JT volunteered. "And now I'm going to have to change our plans for digging our storage cellar into the hillside there. It's sad, really. The conditions for maintaining an even temperature naturally would have been perfect there. It won't be easy to find another site that's just as good."

  "Yes, that is a tragedy," I agreed, in the hope that he wouldn't then go into a long spiel about why it was so important to maintain an even temperature and why it had to be achieved naturally and not with, say, a good heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system. "Why don't you go see if that woman at the front table who's fondling the pear jam actually wants to buy some, and I'll finish with Lilly here?"

  JT might not have the best social skills, but he knew an order when he heard one, even if it was couched in polite terms, and he wasn't afraid of hard work. He hurried out to the front of the stall and bent to address the short woman there. JT was more likely to scare her off than to make a sale, but better to lose that small sale than to irritate a bulk customer like the Smugglers' Tavern.

  "Thank you," Lilly said. "JT kept offering to show me his fermenting vats. I told him I'm not interested in a date, but he didn't seem to hear me."

  "That's because he wasn't flirting with you. He really did want to give you a tour of his fermenting vats. He finds them endlessly fascinating and can't understand that no one else does. He started making perry back when he was twelve and stumbled across the meaning of his last name. At first it was just a science project, but he found he really liked the process. And he's incredibly good at it. I've tasted some of the samples that he offered in place of a résumé when he convinced Merle to hire him. If your customers liked last year's supply, they're going to be completely besotted with this fall's version."

  "As long as I don't have to visit the source to get it, I'm happy. Too many creepy-crawly things on farms."

  Lilly might actually appreciate JT's work areas. He kept them beyond immaculate, all the way to sterile. It was something to do with the fermentation process and not introducing any off flavors or risk factors for fungus, which was apparently the archnemesis of fermenters everywhere—although fungus was probably not what Lilly or any other beverage customer would like to hear about. I hadn't wanted to hear about it either, but that hadn't stopped JT from sharing the graphic details of what a few little spores could do to fruit.

  "I'm sure Merle is planning to deliver the bottles straight to the Tavern the minute they're ready," I told Lilly. "He'd have let you know what the ETA is already, but he's been a bit distracted recently while the police have been crawling all over the orchard."

  "Have they identified the body yet?"

  It was no surprise that she knew about it. News spread quickly in Danger Cove. Especially when it involved a dead body.

  "It's Ryan Palmer. The previous owner of the orchard. One of the owners, anyway. His widow, Louise, is alive as far as anyone knows."

  "I hope the police don't think Merle is the killer. If he's in prison, he won't be able to supply the pear cider…I mean the perry to the Tavern, and my customers will blame me." Lilly laughed self-consciously. "I'm sorry. Now I'm sounding as obsessive and unsympathetic as JT, except in my case all I care about is my customers' experience. It's just that I don't know Merle very well, so I couldn't say whether he might have killed for the land or whether it would be sad if he were sent away."

  "It would definitely be sad if Merle left town." For me in particular, but I also thought quite a few people in town would miss him. Like JT and Cary, who both owed him for giving them chances they'd only dreamed of previously, and even Lilly's customers at the Smugglers' Tavern, who'd been introduced to an artisan beverage they might not have tried otherwise. "I don't see any reason why the police would blame Merle. It sounds like the guy died well before the property was sold. Probably before Merle even knew the orchard existed, when he was living and practicing law on the other side of the continent."

  "That's good," Lilly said. "Merle seems like a nice guy. Please tell him I stopped by and that I want first dibs on the new batch of perry. I'm sure he's got the Tavern's number. He can call me there."

  "I'll tell him."

  Lilly left, heading past the first aid tent and toward the parking lot, rather than checking out the rest of the farmers' offerings. The Baxter twins didn't try to engage her but instead seemed to be distracted by something behind me. Despite their flirting, they were dedicated EMTs and served almost like lifeguards for dry land, always aware of their surroundings and keeping a wary eye on anything that held the potential for someone to get injured. I turned to see what they were watching so intently.

  It was Leo, the game player in the pale blue choir robe. He was crouched on his hands and knees a few yards away in the middle of the Memorial Walkway with his back to me, showing an excessively keen interest in one of the memorial stones that were laid in the grass from the parking lot all the way to the carved-rock stairs that provided access to the lighthouse at the top of the cliff. The stones were flat and rough, about twice the size of a brick's face. They dated back not to the construction of the lighthouse in the late 1800s but to the Vietnam War–era when they were installed to memorialize the local soldiers who had been prisoners of war or missing in action. Near the base of the lighthouse, they were set solidly, a few inches apart, for a width of about five feet, but the path quickly petered out as it led do
wn to the parking lot. Where Leo was, not far from the Pear Stirpes Orchard space, there were just random single stones set several feet apart.

  I stalked across the intervening distance to loom over Leo. "Don't even think about digging up that stone."

  He jumped several inches straight up like a startled cat. It didn't take long for him to regain his composure and scramble to his feet. "I'm not digging. I'm just hiding a game piece."

  "No," I said. "The stones are off limits. I don't want anyone thinking they should search under them. It's disrespectful."

  "But—"

  "No." My hands were probably tied when it came to disciplining the educational-toy seller beyond insisting that he return to his assigned spot, but I thought I had more latitude with the LARPers. The mayor's letter overruling my decision to reject the players' application had been couched in considerably softer terms than the one for Keith Nettles, leaving me some room for discretion in setting limits on the role-playing game. Any political support Leo and the Dangerous Duelers might have had in other circumstances would evaporate if he were accused of disrespecting the memories of lost loved ones.

  Confident of my authority, I warned, "I enjoy seeing your pirates and pioneers at the market, but I hope you understand how much these memorial stones mean to the people who sponsored them. If I find even one of those stones tampered with, no matter how slightly, you won't leave me any choice but to get the police involved. You'll notice that there are quite a few officers here today." I gestured to the nearest example, Fred Fields, who was crouched down to talk to a toddler over near the Cinnamon Sugar Bakery's pushcart.

  Leo crossed his arms over his chest, looking more like a choirboy than the "hanging judge" he aspired to be. "You can't do that. We have the constitutional right to assemble."

  "Not always." I'd gotten some free legal advice from Merle back when I'd first been considering the gamers' application to participate in the market and then again after the mayor's office had overruled my decision. "On behalf of the town, I have the right to impose reasonable limits to protect people and property. If you mess with the stones, that will give me a valid reason to end your assembly. You might be able to fight it in court later, but by the time you get a trial date, this weekend will be long over and so will all the rest of this year's market dates for future games."

  Leo pulled the hem of his choir robe up to his waist so he could dig in the back pocket of his jeans for his phone. "I'm calling my lawyer."

  "Good idea," I said, making a shooing motion. "Just do it from your tent, not here in the middle of traffic."

  He let his robe fall back into place and stomped off, although the effect was marred by his tripping over the hem every few steps.

  Too late, I realized I was standing just outside the stall belonging to the potato farmer, Jim Sweetwater, and he'd witnessed the little confrontation.

  He came strolling toward me—there were, as usual, no customers to keep him occupied—to join me beside the memorial stone that Leo had been studying.

  Jim Sweetwater, in his midfifties and of average height and weight, enjoyed role-playing every bit as much the LARPers did, I thought, although he limited his repertoire to one role: farmer. Or, on one memorable occasion, amateur sleuth on the trail of a killer, but I hoped that was a never-to-be-repeated aberration. Usually he stuck to presenting his unique image of what a farmer should look like, wearing denim overalls on top of a button-down, short-sleeved shirt and a bow tie. Today was no different. In fact I thought he'd worn the exact same bow tie every single weekend since I'd become the market manager.

  "You can't trust the Riccis," Sweetwater said. "They're always scheming."

  I might not like the way he pigeonholed an entire family, for good or bad—that was just the sort of thing my mother claimed everyone did in Danger Cove and what had finally driven her from town when she'd defied expectations for her to live up to her family's heroic reputation—but if anyone knew about a local resident's past bad behavior, it would be Sweetwater. He'd been a guidance counselor at the local high school for his entire career, so he had detailed knowledge of every scandal in town, even the ones that had largely been hushed up, over the course of the past twenty-five years. In theory he should have been bound by the confidentiality rules of his profession, but I'd seen for myself that he wasn't particularly careful about keeping secrets if he thought sharing them could make him feel important.

  I didn't want to encourage his meddling in market affairs. He always pretended he was just using his knowledge of local gossip to protect his fellow vendors, and perhaps sometimes that was his real motivation, but I was convinced that most of the time he just wanted to trip me up, to prove that the town had made a mistake in hiring me.

  Or maybe I was being overly sensitive, since I sometimes thought he was right that the town had made a mistake in hiring me instead of him. The biggest lesson I'd learned so far this summer was how much I didn't know about farmers' markets. They were everything the public thought they were in terms of providing local produce and a unique shopping experience with interesting sellers, but they were also serious participants in a tough-to-survive business environment that operated on tiny margins and that was dependent on the close collaboration of otherwise extremely independent vendors. It only took one uncooperative vendor to ruin the vibe for the entire market. And Jim Sweetwater was constantly needling people into becoming that one bad apple.

  Even if I'd been desperate to find out what Sweetwater knew about Leo, I wouldn't have asked for the information. Fortunately, I didn't need to know any details about the gamemaster's past to know I should keep a close eye on Leo. I was prepared for more trouble from the LARPers once their game got fully underway. Fake pirates were all well and good while they were running around looking quaint, acting out pretend sword fights and battling over plastic doubloons. They weren't quite so picturesque when their corpses—even pretend ones—littered the ground where people had died for real.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I ditched Sweetwater as quickly and civilly as I could and concentrated on the vendors who, unlike him, responded to gentle suggestions and a bit of praise. I knew I could count on the good behavior of the allium and pepper farmers on either side of Sweetwater, the tomato farmer in the spot next to Merle's, and the high school consumer sciences students closely supervised by a teacher a little further up the path on the same side as the first aid tent. Still, I liked to check in with all of the vendors from time to time to make sure they didn't need anything and knew how much I appreciated their participation in the market. I couldn't take the chance that the very best ones might feel slighted and desert the Lighthouse Farmers' Market. Not only would their continued participation and success reflect well on me as the manager, but I needed them in order to get the attention—in a good way—of the people responsible for the various "best of the markets" lists.

  I was chatting with the owner of the stall directly across from the first aid tent—the farmer there had the most amazing supersweet corn along with more decorative varieties—when Cary came running toward me, shouting my full name again.

  "Maria Dolores! The lady is crying!" He pointed back in the direction he'd come from, to where I could see Tommy Fordham already wheeling his chair at top speed toward the last space on the right, across from the one I hoped had by now been vacated by the toy salesman.

  Before I could go see what was happening, I needed to make sure Cary would stay away from the vicinity of the crisis. He'd been known to melt into a heap on the ground when exposed to conflict.

  "I'll take care of it. Would you go help JT while I'm doing that?" The two of them actually got along quite well, despite both of them generally having poor social skills, perhaps because JT liked to give extremely detailed and metaphor-free instructions, and Cary functioned best when given precise and unambiguous orders.

  I raced up to see who the crying lady was. I already had a pretty good idea who had caused the tears, so I wasn't surprised to see th
at Tommy Fordham had used his wheelchair to herd Henry Atwell, a brilliant woodworker with the personality of the pretransformation Scrooge, into the far corner of the WoodWell stall.

  I spared a quick glance for the canopied space directly across the path, confirming that Keith Nettles had indeed vacated it. I could concentrate on my latest problem child without worrying about the previous one getting any ideas about sneaking back while I was distracted.

  The crying lady turned out to be the yarn and fiber vendor. She was standing in front of her spinning wheel, being comforted by Denise Casey, a middle-aged woman dressed in pale gray nursing scrubs, who owned Danger Cove Dairy. I joined the women somewhat reluctantly. I had four much-younger half siblings, and they'd learned very quickly to take advantage of the fact that I was no good at dealing with crying or anything else that was irrational.

  There wasn't much I could do to prepare for tears, but I had stocked up on tissues. I dug a travel pack of them out of my sling bag and handed it to the crying woman, who dabbed at the purple mascara running down her cheeks.

  I sometimes thought farmers' market vendors tended to look a bit like their products, the way old married couples evolved to look like each other or animal lovers looked like their pets. Not so for Jasmine "Jazz" Constant. She owned Snazzy-Jazzy Fibers, which sold handspun and hand-dyed yarns, some of them made from the plucked fur of angora bunnies, like the one she had on display. But there was nothing soft or fluffy about the woman. In her early thirties, she was all straight lines and sharp angles from the top of her spiky black hair to the stripes on the footbed of her flip-flops. She also rejected the quaint image of a spinner in hippy or old-lady clothing and wore a silk square-necked short-sleeved blouse with a short black pencil skirt that called attention to her long legs.

  I'd been assured that Jazz was one of the very few women on the planet who could stand to be anywhere near the curmudgeonly Henry Atwell and that she wouldn't have any problem with her space being next to his. Apparently I'd been misinformed. Just one more thing to ask Merle about if he was ever released from Detective Ohlsen's detention at the orchard.