A Tine To Live, A Tine To Die Part 13

Cam checked the old clock on the back wall of the barn. Two forty-five. Fifteen minutes until she could be done with today, at least the public part. She looked at the shareholder sign-in sheet. Stuart Wilson was again the only one who hadn't shown.

She sank into a lawn chair next to the farm table, the last bunch of asparagus forlorn in its bucket of water, the last of the mesclun looking a little tired at having been pawed through for more than two hours. Cam had been pawed through, too. She slouched, her feet in their muddy work boots extending in front of her, crossed at the ankles.

The complications of the day elbowed each other for her attention. Wes and Felicity telling her Pappas was curious about where Lucinda had gone last night. Well, where had she gone in such a hurry, right in the middle of the dance? What had happened to pique Pappas's curiosity? Cam hadn't gotten a chance to ask Lucinda this morning, and she had left an hour ago, during the busiest pickup time. Bev Montgomery had been so unpleasant to Cam, for no reason she could think of. Alluding to her past with Albert. Glaring at Lucinda and maligning her, really, with that talk about "her own kind." Cam found thinking about all of it more exhausting than the physical work of farming.

A sweet whiff of the antique narcissus mixed with the pungent spring garlic and with the smells of the barn: old hay, honest dirt, machine oil, and dust-filtered sunlight. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, folding her hands over her stomach. Time to just be in the present. Farming was what she'd wanted, after all, complications be d.a.m.ned. Life could be a lot worse.

At the slamming of a door, her eyes flew open. Stuart dashed into the barn, stopping when he saw her.

"Sorry. Late again."

"No, you're good." Cam nodded at the clock, then gestured at the table. "It's all here for you."

"Oh, hey, I forgot my bag. Do you have a couple I can use?"

Cam rose and dug several plastic grocery bags out of the a.s.sortment she kept in a box under the table for just that reason.

She sat again and watched as Stuart bagged the mesclun. She winced when he loaded heavier items on top of the tender greens in the bag. His hand shook slightly as he extracted the flowers from their water.

"Looked like you had a good time at the festival last night, dancing and all." Cam smiled at him.

Stuart laughed. "Uoh, I'm not too bad at it. I used to go to Cambridge Contra every week. I really get into dancing."

Cam raised her eyebrows.

"My old dad would be turning in his grave if he knew, though. Would have called it a sissy thing to do."

"Really?" Cam didn't dance, but it was because of her uncoordinated, gawky moves when she tried, not because she didn't believe in it.

"Yeah, he was military all the way. Didn't believe in dancing, flowers, none of the finer things in life. Gave my mother grief, I can tell you."

"Any idea where your partner lit out to?" Maybe Stuart could tell her about the rest of Lucinda's evening.

Stuart hefted the bundle of asparagus for a moment before adding it to his bag. "My partner?"

"You were dancing with Lucinda. Then, during the big circle dance, she split all of a sudden. I didn't see her again."

He rubbed his hair with one hand, then wiped his forehead. "I don't know. I stayed for the dance. Well, gotta run." He didn't meet Cam's eyes. He lifted the bag he'd just filled. "Thanks." Stuart strode out of the barn.

Cam waved in a wasted gesture. Had he seen Lucinda again after the dance? That was the question she should have asked him. The question he was probably trying to avoid by clearing out like he'd just been called to a fire. And she was pretty sure he wasn't one of the Westbury on-call firefighters. Well, hey, maybe they'd gone home together. Which was their business, not hers.

She caught sight of a full bag on the floor and sighed. Looked like half of Stuart's share was hers now. Shifting in her chair, she felt the object Ellie had given her press into the top of her thigh. She pulled it out of her pocket, wondering why Ellie had wanted to keep it a secret. It looked like a little flashlight. Cam switched it on and aimed it around the barn, but she couldn't see any light. She turned it to look at the lens but didn't see light there, either. What the heck was it, and what was it doing on Cam's farm?

She walked out to the daylight. She held the object close. The black rubbery case bore a small logo that read PursueTech and what looked like a product code. "IR four-fifty SuCov," Cam read out. She looked around, as if in another universe the owner would walk up the drive, claim the cylinder, explain why he or she had left it on Cam's farm, apologize, and leave.

Since that wasn't going to happen, it was clearly time for a cold beer, lunch, and the Internet, in that order. She grabbed the one unclaimed fish from the cooler and headed for the house. The Internet would also help with what to do with a whole fish, head and all.

Chapter 12.

After lunch Cam set to researching the fish first. The plethora of recipes and filleting advice overwhelmed her. She gave up for the moment, wrapped the fish in plastic, and stowed it in the back of the freezer. What she really wanted to do was find out what IR 450 SuCov was.

Cam surveyed her monitor a few minutes later. She propped her elbows on the desk, chin in both hands. She had found the object on the Internet, all right, but was having trouble getting her mind around it. The IR 450 SuCov was an infrared light. SuCov stood for Super Covert. It was a tool the military, or the paramilitary, for that matter, used with night-vision equipment. According to the description on PursueTech's Web site, the beam was invisible unless you wore the kind of goggles that worked on that spectrum. And if you did, the device provided high-power illumination.

Cam looked at the little cylinder next to her keyboard. She reached out a hand and rolled it back and forth. This object, Ellie's innocent-looking "gadget," was a tool for sneaking up on people, for spying, for communicating with fellow undercover agents, whoever they were. Ellie had guessed right. Someone had been using it on her property, had dropped it in her woods. She glanced back at the screen. PursueTech was just what it sounded like. The company sold high-tech tools used in pursuit of the enemy. This particular tool cost 160 dollars.

Cam whistled. The owner had to have bucks to spend so much on a flashlight, and he or she might be part of the Patriotic Militia. But whose light was it? People had been covertly searching her property at night, and she had no idea who or why. Or which enemy they were after. If anyone out there thought Cam was a bad guy, they were seriously misguided.

But a true bad guy was still out there. It was time to do a stint of armchair sleuthing.

Half an hour later she'd set up a database of everything she knew relating to Mike's murder. She examined the rows and columns. People who knew Mike. Other farmers who might be feeling the stress of compet.i.tion with Cam's product. People who might be connected with the Patriotic Militia. Immigrants like Lucinda. People Great-Uncle Albert knew. Time of day Cam had seen any of the players or knew where they had been. Even all the subscribers. But finding a connection between motive, victim, and perpetrator seemed impossible.

What had she missed? Well, alibis for Sat.u.r.day late afternoon, but that was the domain of the police.

Preston reared up on his hind legs to rub his head against her knee. As Cam scratched his brow, she said, "Mr. P, this is getting me nowhere. I don't know who disliked Mike. I have no idea who this shadowy militia is. The farmers I'm in compet.i.tion with aren't mean or violent, as far as I know. Uncle Albert couldn't have had any enemies. What else should I be thinking of?"

When Preston didn't answer, Cam decided to hack together a Python utility script to dig through all the data and display it graphically in a Web page. Twenty minutes later, she narrowed her eyes at a flowchart with colored lines connecting names, times, and relationships.

But software didn't do any good if it didn't have data to work with in the first place. And she'd never encountered a software engineer who could predict how someone would act under X amount of stress or Y amount of pressure. Just for the heck of it, she poked around on the Internet, trying to find psychological predictive software. She finally came up with a doc.u.ment called the DSM-V, which looked like it was a catalog of all mental disorders. It was searchable, but it wasn't what she needed.

Preston mewed in his tiny voice and rubbed her knee again.

Cam drained the last bit from her gla.s.s and saved her work. The next time she picked up a bit of information, she could always enter it into the database and regenerate the display.

She checked her e-mail. She opened a message from Lucinda, asking if Cam wanted to join her at the free outdoor concert in Newburyport that evening. Lucinda wrote that they could bring food and wine and have a picnic supper. Cam looked at the time. She stretched and thought about sitting home alone versus being out in public and having to be social. The former was definitely her path of least resistance. The latter? Sometimes one was called to a higher purpose. She fired off a reply and headed for the shower, plotting how she could delve deeper into Lucinda's secrets, and maybe somehow into the secret of Mike Montgomery's death.

Cam scanned the crowd. Families sprawled on picnic blankets on the gra.s.s between the Firehouse Center for the Arts and the river. Near the temporary stage, a contingent of senior citizens waited expectantly in fabric lawn chairs. A young couple stretched out on their sides on a cloth, the man feeding the woman morsels of dinner. Two boys dashed by Cam, nearly clipping her as she searched for Lucinda. She saw a familiar hand waving from the slight rise on the right and headed that way.

"You snagged a nice spot," Cam said when she arrived. The hillock afforded a better view of the stage and of the wide Merrimack beyond. Lucinda sat on an Indian-print bedspread.

She greeted Cam. "Sit down. Plenty of room."

Cam set her basket down and sat cross-legged next to Lucinda. "Thanks for asking me, Lucinda. I was all set for another Sat.u.r.day night at home alone."

"This band is good. I know the drummer. He's Brazilian."

"What kind of music do they play?"

"Cajun. Fun stuff." Lucinda stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned back on one elbow.

Cam extracted a chilled bottle of white wine from Jewell Towne Vineyards, two plastic cups, and an opener from her basket. "Wine? It's from just over the border in New Hampshire." At Lucinda's nod, she opened the bottle and poured for each of them.

"Saude." Lucinda extended her cup toward Cam's. "Cheers."

Cam returned the salutation and sipped the wine. It went down cool and easy. A breeze cooled the air, too, this close to the water. She closed her eyes for a moment.

A high-pitched sound blasted. Cam winced and opened her eyes again. Down on the stage the band was setting up and testing amplifiers.

Lucinda drew several containers out of her bag, as well as a couple of plastic plates and forks. "Hungry?"

Cam nodded. "I brought green salad. That's all I have that's local yet."

"Good. I made tabbouleh. Got cracked wheat from the grain guy at the festival and used goat cheese from that farm in Topsfield and your mint." She leaned close to Cam and whispered, "I cheated on the olive oil. Don't tell." Lucinda sat back and laughed.

"Listen, I don't care if you cheat or not." Cam proffered her salad. "The few fine things in life we can't produce here? I'd cheat, too, if it meant I couldn't have coffee, chocolate, or olive oil."

She filled her plate and began to eat, as did Lucinda. A seagull landed on the blanket next to theirs, vacated a minute earlier by a woman and a little girl who had headed hand in hand toward the boardwalk along the river's edge. The bird tugged at an open bag of chips with its beak until a chip fell out. It pecked at it and then flew off, chip secured. Lucinda reached over and flipped a corner of the blanket over the bag.

"You see why seagulls are so fat around here," a male voice said.

Cam twisted her head to look up. Wes Ames stood there. "Hey, Wes." Cam looked around. "Where's Felicity?"

He pointed to the other side of the crowd. "Her sister is visiting, and they're chatting up a storm. I'm just stretching my legs before the music starts. Hi, Lucinda." Wes squatted down. "The band is supposed to be good."

Lucinda nodded with her mouth full. She chewed and swallowed before she spoke. "They're fabuloso. You know, really good."

Wes stood. "I'll let you ladies eat in peace. Enjoy the concert."

"Hang on a minute, Wes." Cam drained her cup and set her plate down. "I'll walk with you. I need to go find the facilities before the music gets going. Back in a flash, Lucinda."

Lucinda, taking another bite, waved them on.

As they walked, Cam said to Wes, "Can you tell me any more about what Detective Pappas asked you this morning, Wes?" The question came out way more bluntly than she'd intended, but it was too late to take it back. She despaired of ever learning the smooth dance of communication, which everyone else seemed to have mastered.

Wes looked straight ahead. Furrows creased his brow. "He asked us if we'd seen Lucinda leave. He wanted to know if she'd come back to the festival later or if she'd called us." He walked a few more paces, then burst out, "I hate it when the pigs come to the house. The cops lost my respect in the sixties and never earned it back."

Cam raised her eyebrows but kept her mouth shut. He was just an old hippie like her parents. Except then they'd become itinerant academics. She realized she didn't know Wes's profession, but now wasn't the time to ask. She strolled in silence next to him. They walked slowly, weaving through locals out for a summer evening, dads pushing strollers, teenagers hanging on each other.

"I told him we hadn't seen her. I barely know Lucinda, you realize." Wes looked over at Cam. "Was she involved with the murder? Pappas seemed pretty suspicious of her."

"She wouldn't kill someone. I'm sure of that." Cam shook her head, then caught a wave of dizziness from having chugged her cup of wine. She took a deep breath to steady herself.

Wes kept his silence.

"Lucinda has been acting a little strange lately," Cam said, hoping to draw him out.

"I heard an interesting tidbit. Our neighbor saw a story about the murder on the news, and he said Mike was tight with that anti-immigrant group."

"I know. Lucinda actually told me that. Think that's why Pappas suspects her? That the militia was going to turn her in?"

Wes shrugged. "I couldn't say. Why don't you just ask the detective?"

Cam laughed. "Oh, that's way too obvious. But, anyway, I doubt he's going to tell me about his thought process."

Wes agreed. The walkway split, and Cam said good-bye as she followed the left branch to the portable johns the city had set up.

"See you next week," Wes called.

Cam answered with a wave. She stood in line for the toilets behind two teenage girls who must have bought out the makeup aisle at the drugstore. Cam glanced to her left. The setting sun lit up the river so it looked like G.o.d had poured rose-colored dye into it. Cam's thoughts were not on the natural beauty of the Merrimack, though. Somewhere in the universe was the person who had slammed Cam's pitchfork into Mike's neck. Cam wondered if she was deluding herself, thinking she could find a murderer. Maybe she should just let the police do their work.

Cam and Lucinda joined the rest of the audience on their feet during the last of several encore tunes. It was toe-tapping music, and lots of people danced. But the concert had been too loud for Cam to get a chance to ask Lucinda about the night before. When the song was over, Cam packed up the corkscrew and the now-empty bottle and cups.

As Lucinda stuffed the bedspread into her bag, she said, "I'm gonna go meet Jorge, the drummer. Want to come out with us for a drink?"

Cam checked her watch and groaned. "It's already ten thirty, Lucinda. I'm a farmer, remember? I need to get home. But I wanted to ask you a question before you go."

Lucinda gazed at the stage. She twiddled one long silver earring between her fingers in a fast little movement. "What is it?"

"Why did you cut out so suddenly during the dance last night? It looked like David Kosloski spoke to you and then you split. What did he say?"

"Oh, nothing. It was just about working for him." Lucinda didn't look at Cam.

"Really? It looked like you were upset by what he said."

Lucinda turned to Cam. Her eyes flashed. "Listen. You're very nice. But you've never been in trouble. You don't understand. Just leave it alone. Okay?" She gestured into the air with one hand.

"Did it have anything to do with Mike's murder? I need to know, Lucinda. It's been a week since he died. The police don't seem to be doing anything."

"Oh, they're doing something. Hara.s.sing me is what they're doing. I think they're following me. And you know why I was late this morning?" Lucinda stuck her hands on her hips and glared at Cam. "They came and searched my apartment. Had a warrant and everything. I told them they wouldn't find nothing. In fact, I left them there, told them I had to get to the farm."

"Lucinda. You could have told me."

"Ellie was there this morning. I didn't want to get into it. I don't know what they were looking for, but I know I'm clean. I didn't kill Mike Montgomery, Cam. But they'd rather blame it on an immigrant than find out the truth."

"Pappas did say last night he thought they might be getting close. But every day that goes by, the killer is still out there. It's starting to spook my customers, and, well, funny stuff has been happening on the farm. It makes me uneasy."

"What kind of funny stuff?" Lucinda's angry look dropped away, and the glare was replaced by a look of intense curiosity.

Cam told her about the rhubarb and the arugula. "And I found this weird flashlight thing in the woods. Actually, Ellie found it. It turned out to be an infrared flashlight. You can only see the light from it if you're wearing night goggles. Who would be wearing night goggles on my property? And why?"

"Has to be that militia. Isn't that the kind of thing they do? They go around pretending they're at war. Mike could have dropped it."

"On my farm? But why? He worked there. He didn't have to skulk around at night." Cam took a deep breath. "It all makes my head swirl. Listen, I'd better get going. Go find your friend. I'll see you in a couple of days."

Lucinda nodded. "I'll come help you harvest for the market Tuesday."

"Sounds good." She watched Lucinda make her way toward the stage. Cam headed along the paved path toward her truck. The crowd had already thinned out, with parents taking tired children home and senior citizens boarding the van back to their a.s.sisted living residence. The younger adults wandered in the direction of the several bars in town.

As Cam rounded the corner of the Firehouse, she heard raised voices. She stopped still. Two figures faced each other under a tree. The direct illumination from the streetlight didn't reach under the canopy of leaves, so Cam couldn't see who they were, but she thought she recognized one of the voices. It sounded like Frank Jackson. She stepped quickly behind an enclosure that had to house a trash Dumpster. Cam was fine with the smell of rotting vegetables, but the acrid tang of a chemical cleaning solution made her feel sick.

She pressed her back against the rough pickets of the stockade-fence enclosure and stuck her head out only far enough to be able to hear.

"Hush. You can't go around shouting like a crazy person," one of them whispered in a harsh tone.