A Tine To Live, A Tine To Die Part 11

"How's business?" Pete Pappas materialized opposite Cam.

Why was he at the festival?

"May I?" He gestured to one of the last strawberries.

"Sure. Business is booming. You're lucky to get one of those." Cam pointed to the strawberry. "Are you interested in local foods?"

"Not in the slightest. But it's my job right now to be interested in your farm." His smile was thin and didn't include the least sc.r.a.p of warmth.

Cam returned the smile.

"Cam! Great speech." Ellie Kosloski stood next to Pappas, her father behind her. "I can't wait to come and help tomorrow morning."

Pappas raised an eyebrow. "More of your volunteers?" He nodded at Ellie and David.

"David and Ellie Kosloski, this is Detective Pappas. Detective, two of my shareholders. Ellie's doing her Girl Scout locavore badge, too."

Pappas nodded. "Mr. Kosloski. We've spoken on the telephone."

David nodded in return. He met Pappas's eyes briefly. Ellie waved at someone across the room and led her father away.

"Young Peter!" Albert's voice boomed from Cam's side.

Pappas's startled look was the first time Cam had seen him surprised.

"I knew your father. Spiros was a good man." Albert extended his hand. "Albert St. Pierre. I'd get up, but . . ." He gestured toward what was left of his leg.

Pappas shook Albert's hand. A smile drew across his face, under eyes tinged with sadness. "You knew my babas?"

"Yes. Spiros and I ran Rotary events. You know, getting money for winter coats for poor children. Bringing the kids up from the hot city-from Dorchester or Lowell-to the country for the summer. Why, we used to host them at the farm." Albert turned to Cam. "You remember, don't you, Cameron?"

Cam shook her head. "Maybe it was before I started coming. I was usually alone there. I mean, the only child. That's why I hung out with Ruthie."

"I daresay you're right. It must have been in my younger days."

Pappas ran a hand through his hair. Cam hadn't noticed the gray in it before. It was almost a week since the murder and still no arrest. He was in charge of the investigation. She imagined that could cause gray hair to sprout in anybody.

"I remember older children staying with us when I was little," he said. "They helped out at Babas's store."

Albert nodded. "Say, my niece here says you're the man in charge of finding who stabbed poor Montgomery on my, I should say her, farm. Haven't found the killer yet? Mike's mother is getting worried you might never."

"We haven't made an arrest, sir." Pappas glanced at Cam. "Yet. We could be getting close, however. I should have asked to interview you earlier, since the victim was your former employee. My oversight. When would be a good time to talk?"

"No time like the present. Cameron, we're not leaving soon, are we? It's still hopping here."

Cam looked around. It was still hopping. She checked her watch. It was eight o'clock, but the hall remained full. The discordant notes of a tuning fiddle drifted over from the corner and then morphed like a b.u.t.terfly into a full-fledged bluegra.s.s tune, accompanied by a banjo and a guitar. Looked like the hopping was ramping up.

"No, we're not going soon."

Pappas gestured toward the doorway. "How about a breath of air?"

"I wouldn't mind it," Albert said, deftly turning the chair. Pappas followed him out.

Tapping her foot to the tune, Cam watched them go. Albert had mentioned Mike's mother to Pappas. Wouldn't Cam love to be a fly on the handle of his wheelchair to hear what Great-Uncle Albert knew about Bev Montgomery. What he hadn't wanted to tell Cam the other night. And then Pappas's comment "We could be getting close." If it was true, she might be able to breathe easily again.

Cam swung around at the swell of a crowd's worth of rhythmic clapping. A contra dance had materialized, complete with a caller in a swirly black skirt and red cowboy boots. Lucinda, squired by Stuart, sashayed to the music down the middle of a double row of people and then back. They separated and danced alone down the outside of the rows, Lucinda twirling as she went, Stuart doing fancy maneuvers with his feet. They took up positions facing each other again at the far end. Stuart smiled at Lucinda, who returned it with a five-hundred-watt beam. The rest of the dancers and half the observers clapped in time to the music.

Cam turned back to her farm table. The Herb Farmacy woman was packing up. Wes and Felicity had joined the dancers. Cam tidied up the cards and the display, removing the empty strawberry bowl and the note about taking only one, now face-down and forlorn on the cloth. She hummed along with the band, swaying to the music as she worked.

Suddenly a large warm arm encircled her waist. "Want to join the contra line?" Jake asked. His eyes twinkled under a mock frown. "Dare we?"

Cam flushed, loving the feeling of his arm but thinking this was a very public place to be seen so close. "Uh, I don't dance." She twisted away and faced him, smiling.

"You were, Farmer Flaherty. I saw you." Jake's double-breasted white shirt bore evidence of serving, and his hat was now askew as he returned her smile. The smile lines around those pale eyes countered their icy blue color. An escapee lock of hair over his brow gave him a boyish look.

"That wasn't dancing." Cam shook her head. "Besides"-she gestured around the room-"too many people here." She raised her eyebrows, hoping he would understand.

"Maybe we'll dance in private one of these days. What do you think?" Jake leaned his face close to hers until she could feel his heat.

Cam thought she would very much like to dance in private with this man. She took a deep breath. "How about I cook dinner for you tomorrow night?"

Jake gestured at his shirt with both hands and gave her a rueful look. "I'm a chef, remember? I cook all the nights but Monday and Tuesday. Even tonight I had to talk my sous-chef into being the big boss for an evening."

"Monday it is, then. On the farm. Six o'clock?"

Jake nodded. "I'll bring the dance music." He smiled over his shoulder as he strode away.

The tune changed to an even livelier one. Cam packed up the rest of the display and folded the cloth, tapping her foot. The dancers had formed two circles mostly defined by gender, one inside the other, women on the inside, men on the outside. The men's circle moved at the caller's instruction, so the partners changed with every call.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, you be sure to introduce yourself if you don't know your new partner when he or she shows up," the caller announced.

Alexandra looked like she'd done this before, decorating the basic moves with flair and energy. Ellie and her father danced in the circles, too, Ellie holding her own with men twice her size and three times her age as the outer circle moved.

While Cam watched, David Kosloski came face-to-face with Lucinda. She smiled at him as he leaned toward her and seemed to say something. Lucinda's eyes widened in a look of alarm. Her smile vanished. She spoke, then dashed out of the circle and toward the propped-open back door.

Cam checked the clock as she lay in bed. Midnight thirty. The unmoving, moisture-laden air pushed down like a blanket. Even a sheet felt too hot, so she sprawled uncovered, wearing only a long T-shirt softened to the texture of silk by years of washing.

The heat kept her awake. Her stomach was a little queasy, too. Thoughts chased each other around her brain as she lay there. Lucinda had acted so oddly tonight. Showing up late to her own event? Very strange. Absent when Cam finished her little speech? A little weird. Zooming around like she was high during the event? Okay, normal. But tearing out of there, with alarm written on her face, right after seeing David Kosloski? Just plain odd, and a little scary. The two must know each other, since Lucinda cleaned the Kosloski house. Maybe Cam should call her, but it seemed like too much effort right now.

Then Pappas taking Great-Uncle Albert outside so Pappas could grill him, or maybe it was Albert getting information out of Pappas. Cam hadn't been able to find out which, since Albert had fallen asleep on the drive home.

She grabbed her stomach and groaned. All of a sudden she had a lobster thrashing around in her gut, claws and all. She raced down the stairs to the bathroom, arriving in the nick of time. Her head pounded as she lost her dinner in first one direction and then the other, like she was being turned inside out. When the attack seemed to be over, she washed her hands and rinsed her mouth out. A shudder rippled through her, and she wondered if she was going to be sick again. Looking in the mirror, she was shocked at how pale her face was.

Cam inhaled deeply and let the air out. If this was from what she'd eaten at the Locavore Festival, it wasn't very good advertising for local foods. She padded out into the dark parlor and sank into an armchair. She shook her head. Unless others reported getting sick, she didn't have any way of finding out what had caused her own distress. It could be a flu bug, she supposed. Or maybe it was mixing beer with rum with wine. How many times did she have to tell herself not to do that?

Exhausted by the quick ordeal, Cam thought she could probably sleep now. It was warm and a little claustrophobic down here in the dark. She checked the door and windows, then climbed the wide pine stair treads, which dipped in the middle from centuries of farmers going up to bed. The wood was cool under her bare feet and was lit only by the ambient light from the uncovered windows upstairs. At the landing she paused and leaned her elbows on the windowsill at the front of the house. The Strawberry Moon shone fuzzy around the edges from the moisture in the air. Crickets fiddled while she watched fireflies swell to light and then dim again as they danced around the antique lilac.

Cam heard a noise. She froze. What was that? She heard it again. Not a sound produced by the natural world. A clunk, a kind of metallic noise. She peered out as best she could. The yellow glow of the streetlight didn't reach into the dark areas next to the house or the hiding places under the lilacs and forsythias filling the s.p.a.ce between the road and the house.

She shivered. Someone might be out there snooping around the house, spying on her. Or trying to break in. Or doing more damage to her crops.

Cam shook her head. She told herself to get a grip. She was a competent adult with a smarter-than-average brain. She knew the doors were locked downstairs and the windows were open only at the top. What she needed was a plan.

She tiptoed into her room. She exhaled with relief when she saw her cell phone by her bed. She threw a work shirt on over her sleepwear and pulled on a pair of shorts. She unplugged the clock radio that sat on the bedside table and slid back into the hall. She plugged it in at the receptacle directly under the front window. She set the radio on the windowsill, speaker facing out, switched it to a talk show, and turned the volume up as high as it would go. Flipping the lights on in the other rooms upstairs completed the plan. Let whoever it was think she wasn't alone.

In her bedroom at the back of the house, Cam sat on her bed in the dark. The motion-detector floodlight she'd installed could finally come in handy tonight. If the intruder moved to the back, he or she would have no place to hide.

She waited about twenty minutes. The floodlight did not come on. She heard no more noises. She switched off the radio and the room lights. Tomorrow was share day, and dawn would come in a few short hours. If someone wanted to break into her house, well, let them try. As sleep started to dance around the edges of her consciousness and the beginning scene of a dream projected its images, an idea came to Cam. She told herself to remember it in the morning, then slid into oblivion.

"Here you go, Ellie." Cam handed the girl a pair of scissors and a basket. "Clip the greens right above the ground. They'll grow back, and in two weeks we'll have another whole crop of mesclun."

"I'm all over it." Ellie knelt in the path next to the greens bed. "Thanks for, like, letting me help."

"Hey, I need all the help I can get. The thanks are all mine, girlfriend."

Ellie c.o.c.ked her head and frowned, then started cutting.

"Is that an odd thing for a grown-up to say?" Cam asked.

"Yah, duh. I mean, well, we don't say stuff like that."

Cam smiled to herself. She hadn't hung out with fourteen-year-olds since she'd been one herself. She was glad Ellie wanted to help harvest on share morning. And, frankly, that Ellie's father hadn't stayed to help, too. He was a little odd, that one.

She checked her watch. Ten after nine. No Lucinda. She had told Cam she would come early to harvest again, like last week. Maybe Lucinda ran into trouble after she raced out last night. Cam shook her head. She had too much to do to worry about it. She set to work pulling lettuce heads, roots and all, then plunging them into the wide galvanized-metal basin she'd filled with water. She wiped her forehead with her wet hand. The air was as hot as yesterday, even this early, and as humid, too.

Cam looked over at Ellie. "I'd better get you a bin to soak those in instead of the basket. They'll wilt in a minute in this heat, and we need to keep them fresh. Be right back."

Ellie nodded, singing a song to herself under her breath.

Cam took a closer look. The girl had an earbud in one ear whose wire snaked down to the pocket on the bib of her overalls. The youth of today. Actually, Cam knew a lot of people her own age and older who were never without their minuscule music devices. As Cam walked to the barn, she reflected on what an aberration she was. For her, listening to the birds in the trees and the breeze in the leaves was a lot nicer music than anything that came out of a little metal square.

She rummaged through the corner of the barn where she kept big containers until she found a plastic storage bin Ellie could rinse the greens in. Cam glanced over at the farm table and wrinkled her nose. In three hours the table had to be full.

"Oh, crud! I forgot to make a dish for the shareholders to sample," she said aloud. A misbegotten plan if there ever was one. The printed recipes would have to suffice this week. And every week, for that matter. Let them make their own dishes. Cam ran to the house, glad she'd thought to type up a half dozen recipes before the season started.

She stopped short, with her hand on the door. A small galvanized metal bucket sat on the stoop. It held dozens of cut red carnations in water. A little metallic ladybug stuck to the outside. The array was gorgeous, but where had it come from? Somehow she had missed it this morning. She must have opened the door wide and not seen it. A metal bucket-that could have been the sound she'd heard in the night. The sound of kindness, not malice.

Cam picked the bucket up but didn't see a card or any other indication of who her secret admirer was. Thinking the flowers had to be from Jake, a rush zipped through her. She carried the bucket in and set it carefully on the table.

She fired up the computer and sent Rosemary-Roasted Lamb and Asparagus Frittata to print, thirty copies each, then raced back to the barn. She'd left Ellie alone long enough as it was.

When Cam got back to the greens bed with the bin and the end of the hose, Ellie was not there. She dropped the bin and swore. Ellie's basket was full, with the scissors laid neatly on top. Cam looked in every direction. She couldn't see Ellie. Cam hadn't been gone very long. She was suddenly cold, her veins infused with ice water.

"Ellie!" She called as loud as she could. The air seemed to have become silent except for her call. Cam didn't hear the birds, the leaves, the road traffic. Nothing. If the girl had come to harm, Cam would not forgive herself. She cupped her hands around her mouth and called again, in the direction of the woods skirting the back of the property this time.

"Hi, Cam! I'm over here." Ellie waved in the distance.

Cam's heart rate started making its way back to normal. She closed her eyes for a moment's grat.i.tude to whatever G.o.ddess was out there. She reopened them to see Ellie sauntering toward her.

"Where were you?" Cam tried to keep the worry out of her voice.

"The basket was full and you weren't back, so I thought I'd look around. I was walking down the row of tomatoes when I saw a flash of light from the edge of the woods, like the sun was reflecting off something shiny. I already got my science sleuth badge, but I wanted to, you know, check it out, anyway."

"So you're all right?"

Ellie shook her head with a little frowning smile. "Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I didn't see you and-"

"And you thought maybe the murderer was back?" Ellie put one hand in her pocket as she raised her eyebrows. Her other hand she kept behind her.

"No!" At Ellie's frank gaze, Cam said, "Well, yes. Crazy, huh?"

Ellie nodded. "Want to see the thing I found? It looks like a gadget I read about in a novel about covert operations." She glanced around. "Maybe there's a spy organization operating undercover."

"Maybe," Cam said, indulging the bookish teen. "Let's see."

Ellie started to bring her hand out from behind her back, then looked beyond Cam. "I'll show you later."

"What? Why not now?"

Ellie pulled her hand back. She shook her head, stuffing whatever it was in her back pocket. "Hi, Lucinda," she called.

Cam whirled. Lucinda strode toward them, hair flying. "Sorry, fazendeira. I was detained."

"Oh, no. What happened?"

Lucinda laughed, but it was a weak imitation of her usual peal. "No, not like that. I mean, I'm late. But I'm here now. Hey, Ellie."

The girl waved.

"Okay, what do we got to do?" Lucinda gazed at Cam. Her eyes were watery, with smudged circles under them.

Cam wanted only to sit her down, get answers to what had happened last night, find out why she was late, make sure she was safe. Of course, maybe she'd had too much to drink, or mixed her drinks like Cam had. Instead of getting into it, she asked Lucinda to fill the bin with water for Ellie. She directed Ellie to dump the greens into the water and cut enough more to refill the basket. She pointed Lucinda to the asparagus beds and took herself off to the perennial herbs to cut and bundle rosemary and thyme for today's shares. They'd be lucky to get the harvest done and organized by noon. As she knelt to cut, she wondered for a moment what Ellie had found. It was probably an object Ellie's teen imagination had embellished a story for. But why had she wanted to keep it secret from Lucinda?

Chapter 11.

Cam surveyed the farm table. The three of them had barely made the noon deadline.

"No, we didn't," she thought aloud. She turned to Lucinda. "Flowers! Can you . . ."

"I'm on it." Lucinda, still looking like she'd eaten a rotten eggplant, grabbed scissors and a bucket and headed for the flower garden.