Bookplate Special: A Booktown Mystery Part 14

The lights of Nashua were straight ahead, and Tricia found herself swallowing over and over again as dread filled her. What about the germs--the stench? Whatever had possessed her to ask Ginny to take her along on one of their scavenging outings? Oh, yeah, she wanted to talk to Pammy's new friends.

What kind of friends picked through trash and then ate it?

Good grief, she'd almost forgotten she'd been on the receiving end of two meals made with trash, although, much as she hated to admit it, the food had been good, a testament to Pammy's culinary abilities.

Brian pulled the car into the parking lot of a convenience store.

"Is this where we're going to start"--Tricia struggled to find an appropriate word--"picking?"

"Nope. I came here to get a sub. If I get a foot-long, we can share it. What do you like, Tricia, turkey or ham?"

"Turkey, please. Although I'm really not very hungry."

"What do you want to drink?"

"Water."

"I'll have a c.o.ke," Ginny said.

Tricia dug in her f.a.n.n.y pack for her wallet. "Let me give you some money for--"

Brian shook his head. "Nope. You've helped us a lot in the past year. This is on us." He opened the driver's-side door and hopped out of the car.

"This is a big night for us," Ginny said, watching Brian enter the store. "It's the only night of the week we eat out anymore."

"Eat out?" Tricia repeated dully.

"Yeah, it's a big deal for us to even get a sub these days."

In minutes, Brian was back, holding a paper sack cradled in his left arm. He opened the car door and handed the bag to Ginny, who began doling out bottles and little packets of mayonnaise and mustard.

"I had the clerk cut it up into several pieces." He eyed the rearview mirror, looking at Tricia in the backseat. "Maybe it's the lighting, but Tricia looks a little green. I don't think she's too hungry, babe."

Ginny laughed. "Tricia, you're not going to get poisoned. And you won't get sick. And you won't have to go into the Dumpster. I don't."

"You don't?"

"I do the dirty work," Brian said, and pulled at the shoulder of his sweatshirt. "I wear layers. If I get grubby, I can just peel them off, and into the laundry they go."

"We've got gloves and a big bottle of hand sanitizer," Ginny said. "Brian hands us what looks salvageable and we hold on to it until we get back to the car."

Tricia let out a whoosh of air. "Thanks for the heads-up. I feel a lot better about this."

Ginny laughed. "I thought you might. Now, have a piece of sandwich. It could be a long evening." She handed Tricia a couple of napkins and a slab of the sub.

Minutes later, Brian collected the papers, stuffed them into the sack, and deposited them in the trash receptacle outside the convenience store. Soon after, they were back on the road.

"We're meeting up with our friends behind one of the smaller grocery stores. The bigger stores are open twenty-four hours, and they don't like us poking through their garbage."

They pulled down a side street and parked. "We walk from here," Brian said.

They got out of the car and locked it. Brian stepped around to the back of the SUV, unlocked it, and took out two big backpacks, several canvas shopping bags, and three pairs of gloves, handing them around so that they each had something to protect their hands. He and Ginny donned the backpacks. "Follow me," he told Tricia, his breath coming out in a cloud.

He turned and headed back to the main thoroughfare, leading the way, leaving Ginny to walk side by side with Tricia. Up ahead, Tricia could see several people standing under a light pole on the far side of the street, two of them with battered helmets and bicycles that sported canvas saddlebags on both front and back.

"'Bout time you guys got here," said a familiar female voice from the shadows.

As they approached, Tricia realized with a start that the voice belonged to Eugenia Hirt--Libby Hirt's daughter. No wonder the head of the local Food Shelf hadn't wanted to talk about the freegans. Her own child was one!

Eugenia looked androgynous. She was dressed in black slacks, a black jacket, and black shoes, and a black-and-white bandana covered her blond hair, which was apparently pinned up. She might've pa.s.sed for a cat burglar. "Hi, Tricia," she called brightly. "Bet you're surprised to see me here."

"A little." Okay, that was a big, fat lie. She was shocked.

"Have you met my dad?" Eugenia asked.

Good grief! Her father was a freegan, too?

A slim, balding man with graying blond hair, probably in his late fifties and also dressed all in black, stepped forward with his hand extended. "Hi, Tricia. Joe Hirt. Eugenia's told me all about you--or at least your dining preferences. The cold tuna plate or cottage cheese with a peach half, right?"

Tricia shook his hand and managed a feeble laugh. "We are what we eat, eh?"

Tricia noticed the bicyclers standing behind him. "This is Lisa Redwood, and Pete Marbello," he said.

They chorused a less-than-enthusiastic h.e.l.lo, and Tricia nodded in greeting. She had never met Lisa before, but Pete looked familiar, though she couldn't place where she might've met him.

"What's the game plan for tonight?" Brian asked.

"We hit this Dumpster," Joe said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, "and then we try the Italian market down the street." As the oldest, Joe was obviously their leader. The others fell into step behind him, with Tricia and Ginny bringing up the rear.

"Is there some significance to everyone wearing all black?" Tricia asked.

"Doesn't show the dirt," Ginny said. "It does give us a little anonymity, too."

They stepped from the sidewalk into a parking lot. A mercury vapor lamp overhead cast a bluish glow over the large green garbage receptacle. Tricia wrinkled her nose and sniffed, grateful for the chilly night. She caught an unmistakable whiff of something vaguely sour, but not entirely off-putting.

"Who wants the honors?" Joe asked.

"It's my turn," Pete said. Brian stepped forward and gave him a leg up, as though he was about to mount a horse, and Pete climbed into the Dumpster. He landed on a pile of black plastic trash bags, piled high, sinking down so that only the top half of his body was visible. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, grabbed a bag of trash, and loosened the twist tie that held it closed. Next, he shone the light into the bag. "Jackpot!" he called, and lifted a loaf of bread into the air. "The sell-by date is tomorrow." He tossed the bag down to Brian, who distributed the booty among them all, including Tricia.

"I really don't want--"

"Shush!" Ginny warned her.

Pete had already opened another bag, wrinkled his nose, and twisted the tie once again. "Paper trash." He grabbed another bag, and another, until he'd gone through most of them. By the time he was done, they'd collected the bread, nearly two dozen potatoes, several heads of what Tricia would have said was questionable lettuce, eight or ten jars of pickles, eleven boxes of crackers, and half a dozen soft tomatoes.

Pete jumped down from the Dumpster and joined Lisa. "Not bad for the first hit."

Joe pointed toward the other side of the lot. "Come on. The evening's getting away from us." Everyone followed.

"This is your chance to talk to the others," Ginny whispered, giving Tricia a poke.

Pete and Joe were in the lead this time, with Brian and Lisa following. Tricia caught up with Eugenia.

"How do you like your first time out, Tricia?"

"It's . . . interesting," she said. "I wasn't sure what to expect. What will you do with all that food?"

"I don't take it to the diner, if that's what you're worried about. And my mom won't accept it at the Food Shelf, either."

"Do you eat it at home?"

"Dad and I do. Mom . . . well, she inspects everything really carefully before she'll touch it. And she washes the jars and cans with a bleach solution in case they've got germs. She's very picky."

"What got you interested in being a freegan?"

"The Food Shelf, of course. I've always known about people going hungry. You can't believe the waste that goes on in this world--and especially this country. Did you know that grocery stores alone throw out between two and three percent of their food every week? That doesn't sound bad until you realize it's like billions and billions of pounds of edible food that ends up in landfills."

Sadly, Tricia could believe it.

"Dad and I tried to be conservationists, too. We went hunting a few times--but were too squeamish to actually kill something and then eat it. Now we just shoot clay pigeons."

"I hear Pammy Fredericks accompanied you guys on several of your . . . forays."

Although her face was half hidden in shadow, Tricia saw the frown that had settled across Eugenia's mouth. "She wasn't a real freegan--she was a scavenger. She didn't care about keeping viable food out of landfills. She didn't care about making the planet a better place to live. All she cared about was money. Getting something for nothing--or getting something she hadn't earned or didn't deserve."

"And you got all that from a couple of conversations?"

Eugenia laughed. "That's all it took."

"What made you think she only cared about material things?"

"The way she talked. She kept saying she was going to come into a lot of cash--that she'd be set for life."

"Where was she getting this money?"

Eugenia shrugged. "Beats me. I didn't really care. I told Dad I didn't want her coming with us anymore. And the next thing you know, she was dead."

Tricia stopped in her tracks.

Eugenia paused and turned. "Hey, don't look at me like that. I didn't mean he killed her. I just mean he told her she couldn't come with us on another run. And as it turned out, she was dead before we went foraging again."

Tricia's dinner sandwich suddenly lay heavy in her stomach.

"Hey, come on, guys," Ginny called, and Eugenia started walking again. Tricia followed.

Eugenia was young. She wouldn't understand what--oh, G.o.d, did Tricia dare admit that she and Pammy were on the cusp of middle age?--life could force you to do.

She didn't like to think about it. Instead, she forced herself to think outside of the box.

Lisa looked to be five or six years older than Eugenia. Perhaps she had a different perspective on Tricia's ex-roommate.

Lisa, accompanied by her bike, walked beside Ginny. They laughed about something, their canvas bags swinging as they walked. They looked happy. They were young and carefree and, for a couple of minutes at least, Ginny seemed not to be bothered by the yoke of debt that bogged down her and Brian, something that seemed to preoccupy her during working hours.

Tricia picked up her pace to shadow them.

"Do you think we'll score any protein tonight?" Ginny asked Lisa.

"We got those steaks last week. There's a chance they didn't sell out what they had, and we'll score two weeks in a row."

Eating marginal meat? The thought made Tricia cringe.

"I marinated ours overnight, and they were fork tender," Lisa went on.

"We did ours on the grill. They were pretty good, but I think next time I'll try a marinade, too." Ginny seemed to sense someone d.o.g.g.i.ng her heels and looked over her shoulder. She gave her boss a nod and turned back to Lisa. "Did you know Tricia was friends with Pammy--the old girl who got killed earlier this week?"

Old girl? Pammy was two months younger than Tricia!

"She came picking with us a couple of times," Ginny went on.

"I remember," Lisa said irritably. "How could I forget? The stupid cow never shut up."

Ginny tossed an uneasy glance over her shoulder and cleared her throat. "Tricia wants to know if we remember anything she could've said or done that might've p.i.s.sed someone off--maybe got her killed."

"That woman p.i.s.sed off the general population simply by breathing," Lisa said. "Why Joe ever let her join us, I don't know."

"How did Pammy know how to find you guys?" Tricia asked.

Lisa shot an annoyed look over her shoulder. "I'm sorry your friend died, but she was a b.i.t.c.h. She didn't have a clue about what we're all about."

"Which is?"

"We're making a statement. This country is awash in waste. For example, the U.S. accounts for four percent of the world's population, yet we consume almost a quarter of the world's energy resources."

Tricia had to bite her tongue to keep from saying, Yada, yada, yada. "That's no reason for someone to kill her," she said instead.

Lisa stopped, turning to face Tricia. Her expression held no warmth. "Pam Fredericks was a greedy user. She wanted more than her fair share of what we found, and she didn't stop at picking up food."

"What else was she looking for?"

Lisa pursed her lips, her eyes narrowing. She glared at Tricia for long moment, then turned and resumed walking.

"Lisa, what else?" Tricia insisted.

"Never mind," she called over her shoulder.

Tricia hurried to catch up. "Ginny?" she implored.

"I can't make her talk," Ginny whispered. "Try asking Joe or Pete."