Rhubarb Pie Before You Die

Book 2: Garlic Farm Mystery

by Gin Jones

Genres: Culinary Cozy Mysteries; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Inheriting her late aunt's Massachusetts farm is no gift for app developer Mabel Skinner, who is about to learn that even the best-grown garlic can't ward off murderous intent . . .



Mabel's hope of finding an enthusiastic farmer to buy Stinkin' Stuff Farm is dying a little bit every day. So far, all she's found are double-dealing developers. But after a heated dispute over grass clippings with an obsessive local rhubarb breeder, she discovers something even more distressing—the breeder in question undisputedly dead in his greenhouse . . .



Uncomfortably aware that she might be a prime suspect, Mabel stops digging in the dirt long enough to dig up more information about the dead man, and anyone else he might have argued with. The list is longer than she imagined, and includes a persnickety neighbor and a rival rhubarb breeder. With all the ingredients for a homegrown mystery, Mabel must unearth a killer—before the next plot to be dug is her grave . . .

Release date: December 22, 2020

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 215

Sample

Chapter 1

“Are you sure this is legal?” Mabel Skinner asked, reluctantly grabbing hold of the nearest yard-waste bag filled with leaves and grass clippings. She’d called her attorney hours ago with the same question, but he hadn’t picked up the private line that he shared only with family, friends, and a very few long-term clients like herself. It wasn’t like him to ignore her. He’d been representing her since her parents died when she was a young child, and he always either picked up her calls or returned them within an hour or two. Just not today.

“Your aunt and I didn’t encounter any problems, and we’ve been doing it for the past five years,” Rory Hansen said, not quite answering the question. She had been one of Aunt Peggy’s best friends, and was honoring that friendship by helping Mabel keep the farm going until it could be sold. Rory was in her forties, tanned from her own outdoor work with the local CSA—Community-Supported Agriculture—group, and tall with a solid build.

She casually tossed her own bag full of yard waste into Aunt Peggy’s old but well-maintained black Ford F-150 truck. It was Mabel’s truck now, she reminded herself, along with everything else at the Stinkin’ Stuff Farm, even if she never actually drove the huge truck herself, deferring to Rory or farmhands to do it. Her Mini Cooper was much more her size.

Mabel had always been risk-averse, even as a child, and then her natural inclinations had been exacerbated by losing her parents to a freak accident. Still, she’d let herself be convinced by Rory that their late-night activity couldn’t get them into too much trouble. After all, Rory had been married to a local police officer for close to twenty years and would never do anything to embarrass him professionally, the way getting herself arrested for trespassing and theft would.

Mabel got a better grip on her paper bag and managed to get it into the back of the truck, although with a lot more effort than her friend had exerted. She tucked her cold hands into the oversized pockets of her aunt’s green barn coat. It was going to be a long night, and a chilly one too. She’d never been much of an outdoor person or a physically active one. She would have much preferred to be back at the farmhouse, in bed, and hunched over her laptop, rather than out here in a neatly manicured subdivision at midnight, collecting bags of what she’d been assured was chemical-free yard waste, perfect for mulching the rows of garlic that would be planted in another couple of weeks at the end of October.

The late-night hour didn’t bother her—even if she’d been back at the farmhouse, she wouldn’t have been ready to sleep for hours yet. Normally at this time of night, she’d have been working at her job, developing apps for her employer, but she was on hiatus while searching for someone to buy the garlic farm she’d inherited from her aunt. Selling was proving to be much more difficult than she’d anticipated. She’d hoped to be back in Maine before it was time to plant the next season’s garlic crop, so the new owner could do it, but that was starting to look unlikely. She’d considered just leaving the fields fallow until the title changed hands, but both Rory and the real estate broker had said that the property would be more valuable if it remained a working farm with a demonstrable stream of income.

“Why can’t we just buy some mulch instead of stealing it?” Mabel asked.

“It’s not stealing.” Rory grabbed another bag. “It’s composting. Plus, we’re saving the town from having to pick it up and transport it to the landfill. It’s win-win for everyone.”

Mabel’s phone pinged in her pocket, and she took it out to check who had texted her. It was from her boss, Phil Reed. She put the phone away without responding. It wouldn’t be fair to make Rory do all the work. Mabel grabbed another bag.

“Who texts you at midnight?” Rory asked. “Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s just my boss.”

“I thought you were on hiatus until you sell the farm.”

“I am, but he likes to check in on me from time to time. He’s hoping I’ll find a buyer quickly and come back to work soon before the year-end rush.”

“I’m not,” Rory said, tossing her bag into the pickup. “I’m hoping you change your mind and decide to stay here in West Slocum and continue what Peggy started.”

“I won’t let Aunt Peggy’s legacy be destroyed. I don’t have to live here to do that though. I’ve told the broker that I’ll only sell to another farmer. Stinkin’ Stuff Farm will continue.”

“It’s not just the farm’s future that I’m concerned about.” Rory turned to lean against the black truck’s tailgate. “I’ll miss you when you leave.”

“Me too.” Just a few months earlier, Mabel wouldn’t have believed she’d feel any regrets about leaving West Slocum. She hadn’t wanted to personally oversee her aunt’s estate and would have delegated it to an agent if she could have, but Jeff Wright, her friend and lawyer, had insisted she had to do it herself. She’d expected to get in and out in just a few days without any personal entanglement, but Rory and the owner of the goat farm next door, Emily Colter, had quickly dragged Mabel into their circle of friendship. Initially, the two women may have only been honoring her aunt’s memory and Mabel had only considered them her aunt’s friends, not her own. Over the last three months though, Mabel thought they’d all come to like each other for who they were, not just for their respective connections with Peggy Skinner.

A rusty old beige pickup screeched to a halt behind Mabel’s truck on the otherwise deserted street. A bearded man jumped out, leaving the engine running. He wore overalls that were both too short and far too wide for his tall, thin frame, and an equally baggy brown barn coat not unlike the one Mabel was wearing. She’d had to take hers from her aunt’s closet, since she hadn’t brought any warm-weather clothes with her when she’d come to West Slocum in July.

“Hey!” the man shouted from beside the open driver’s side door. “You’re stealing my stuff.”

That was exactly what Mabel had been afraid of. That one of the home owners would accuse her and Rory of wrongdoing. She knew she should do something to mollify the man, but she’d had never been any good at dealing with emotional people. Or even logical people who disagreed with her, actually, but it was worse when they were angry.

Mabel looked at Rory, who was much better with people. After all, she’d convinced the outdoors-averse and morning-averse Mabel to be a farmer, even if only temporarily. She still didn’t quite know how it had happened. Rory was that good. Better to leave this situation to her. Mabel wouldn’t be doing her friend any favors by trying to talk to the guy and only making him angrier.

“Relax,” Rory whispered. “I’ll take care of this. Graham Winthrop doesn’t have any more right to the mulch than you do. He lives about the same distance from here and has no direct connection to anyone in this subdivision.”

“But if it matters so much to him…” Mabel trailed off.

“It matters to you too,” Rory said firmly. “Besides, Graham’s got only a tiny parcel of land and doesn’t need all this mulch. He grows some rhubarb for the CSA in his back yard, but mostly he’s interested in breeding it. He’s hoping to develop a new standard for commercial production.”

The man from the truck stomped over to the pile of yard-waste bags, and stood in front of it, his legs and arms spread wide, making him look like a live scarecrow in the ill-fitting clothes that Mabel could now see were also torn and frayed from heavy use, not done intentionally as a fashion statement.

“Go away!” he shouted. “These are mine. All the bags in this neighborhood are mine.”

Mabel would have told him he could have them, but Rory said, “Settle down, Graham. No need to cause a fuss. There’s more than enough here to share. We’ll even help you load your half.” She picked up the bag just beyond his outspread left arm and took a step toward the man’s pickup apparently to show she meant her words.

He grabbed the bag out of her hand, startling a brief, sharp scream out of her. She backed away with her hands raised. “Hey, I was just trying to help you.”

“The only help I want is for you to go away.”

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Rory said defiantly, even as porch lights came on at the house that had produced the contested bags of yard waste.

“Maybe we should leave.” Mabel nodded toward the lights. “I don’t want you to get in any trouble over this. I’m sure we can find other sources of mulch.”

Graham turned on her, raising his voice. “Other sources? What’s your definition of other sources?”

Mabel took an involuntary step backward. The man’s voice wasn’t just angry, it was loud. The sound had probably carried throughout the entire fifty-lot subdivision. Sure enough, a moment later additional lights went on in nearby houses.

“I don’t know what other sources there might be,” Mabel said. “But I’m sure we can find some.”

“You’d better not be planning to raid any of my other suppliers,” Graham said.

“No, of course not.”

“I’ll be watching you.” He glared at her. “And I’ll get an injunction if I so much as see your truck in my neighborhood.”

“Be reasonable, Graham,” Rory said. “You live on the corner of a main street. Mabel has to drive past there to get to the grocery store, the post office, and the library.”

“Not my problem,” he said. “I’m the innocent party here, so you two will have to be the ones being inconvenienced. It’s only fair and equitable.”

A man in plaid pajama bottoms, trying unsuccessfully to zip up his hastily thrown-on hoodie as he approached, arrived in time to respond. “Actually, Graham, I’m the one who’s being inconvenienced. Along with everyone else in this neighborhood. What the hell are you three doing out here at this hour?”

Mabel heard a slight sigh from Rory before her friend turned to face the newcomer. “Councilor Lambert. I’m sorry you had to get involved.”

He snorted. “I bet you are. Does Joe know that you’re out at this hour?”

Rory’s eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead at the suggestion she needed her husband’s permission to go out, but she kept her tone even. “I don’t keep any secrets from my husband. But you can’t blame him for this situation. Mabel and I were minding our own business, just taking away the unwanted yard waste to put it to good use, keeping it out of the waste stream and saving the town the expense of hauling it away, when Graham showed up and started causing trouble.”

Graham started to say something, but the councilor held up a hand for silence. Mabel was surprised when the other man closed his mouth.

“Who’s she?” Lambert asked, pointing at Mabel.

Mabel answered with her name. Then, thinking that hardly anyone in town knew her yet, but everyone seemed to know and respect her aunt, so it wouldn’t hurt to do a little name-dropping, she added, “I’m Peggy Skinner’s niece. I inherited her Stinkin’ Stuff Farm a few months ago, and Rory’s been helping me to keep the farm going until I can find a buyer for it.”

“Objection,” Graham said. “None of this is relevant, Lambert. You need to tell them that the bags all belong to me, so I can get them picked up and go home. I can’t be out here all night. I’ve got to be in court in the morning.”

Getting the threatened injunction? And did that mean she needed to go to court too to stop it? Rory would expect her to defend the farm’s right to organic mulch, but Mabel wasn’t at her best early in the morning, and it was too late at night to call her lawyer so he could take care of it. He couldn’t get from Maine to West Slocum, Massachusetts, in time anyway.

Councilor Lambert wearily ran his hand over his face. “You’re waking everyone up over ownership of grass clippings?”

“We didn’t wake anyone up,” Rory said. “Graham did.”

“I wouldn’t have had to get loud if they’d been reasonable,” Graham denied hotly. “This stuff is valuable. Anyone who knows anything about organic gardening knows that. It’s even called black gold once it decomposes a bit.”

“He’s right about that much,” Rory said reluctantly. “Just not about what constitutes reasonableness. We offered to split it evenly, even though he’s got a smaller farm than Mabel does.”

“I don’t care,” Lambert said. “I just want to get some sleep. And so do my neighbors. They’re going to blame me if I don’t take care of this. So, either you three work it out—quietly—or you need to leave right now and no one gets the mulch.”

“How about we take the bags on the odd-numbered side of the street and Graham takes the ones on the even-numbered side?” Rory suggested.

“That’s not fair,” Graham shouted. “You’re not sacrificing anything, and you’re asking me to give up half of what belongs to me.”

“The bags aren’t all yours,” Rory said irritably. “We’ve been collecting from this neighborhood for years.”

“Ha!” Graham scoffed. “I know that’s a lie. Mabel just admitted she only recently come to West Slocum. She couldn’t have been with you before.”

“Enough,” Lambert said. “Half and half is a fair split.”

Graham grumbled something under his breath, and then said, “All right. But I’m taking the odd-numbered side.”

“Fine,” Rory agreed.

Graham glared at Mabel. “It’s your farm. Do you agree too? Or is Rory authorized to act as your agent?”

Mabel sometimes thought she was Rory’s agent, not the other way around, but now wasn’t the time to bring that up. “I agree.”

Graham peered at her. “You don’t sound sure. I don’t want to hear anything later about how this contract was entered under duress.”

“I’m sure.” Mabel tried to project confidence. Her words may still have sounded uncertain, but that was just how she always sounded. Whenever she needed to be tough, she got her attorney to do the talking. “No duress whatsoever.”

“Okay,” Graham said. “But the agreement is only for tonight’s collection. The rest of the season’s collections belong to me.”

“Wait,” Rory said. “We didn’t agree to that.”

Lambert made a time-out sign with his hands. “Enough. I’ll call Darryl Santangelo in the morning. He’s not terribly busy managing the farmers’ market this late in the season, so he should have time to listen to you present your claims during regular business hours. If he can’t help you come up with a solution, let me know and I’ll take it up with the town council. Just be warned that if it comes to that, I’ll recommend that no one but our trash contractors be allowed to pick up the yard waste, and then neither of you will get it.”

“You can’t do that,” Graham said. “Letting farmers use the yard waste is already an established tradition, like common law.”

“I can do it,” Lambert replied. “Dealing with yard waste wasn’t exactly why I joined the town council, but I’m sure my constituents will appreciate that I’m resolving the problem. Almost as much as I’ll appreciate going back to bed without you three continuing to keeping me awake. Now go get your agreed-upon bags. And don’t make me come back out here again. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a dozen calls from the neighbors at some ridiculously early time tomorrow, so you’d better hope I’ve gotten some sleep before then, or you won’t like the consequences.”

He turned and headed back to his front porch.

Graham didn’t seem to know when to shut up. He shouted at Rory, “You won for now, but this isn’t over.” As he spoke, his barn coat blew open to reveal an orange-handled knife about a foot long in a leather sheath affixed to a belt that cinched in the waist of his baggy overalls. The leather was well worn, but cleaner and in better shape than Graham’s clothes, suggesting he both valued it and used it regularly. He rested his hand on the hilt before adding, “I’ll get what I need, one way or another.”

Rory didn’t seem to have noticed the weapon, and waved at him dismissively before starting to cross the dark street for the bags that had been allocated to Stinkin’ Stuff Farm.

Mabel caught her by the arm. “Let it go for now, please.”

“But your aunt never would have—”

“I’m not my aunt.” Mabel used her grip on Rory’s arm to tug her over toward the driver’s side of the farm’s truck. “I’ll deal with Graham later, in my own way.”

“I heard that,” Graham shouted. He turned toward the town councilor’s retreating back, which had almost reached the porch. “She threatened me.”

Lambert turned around, and even in the dark, even with Mabel’s poor people-reading skills, it was obvious he was going to explode if the situation continued. Things could get out of hand pretty quickly. And Graham had a knife. A big knife.

Mabel’s instincts always called for her to run and hide from situations that involved the risk of even mild confrontation, and they were even more emphatic when there was a risk of violence. Now was not the time to ignore those instincts.

“I did not threaten anyone,” Mabel called out from a safe distance, just to set the record straight, while urgently pushing Rory toward the driver’s side door of the truck. “But there’s no need to argue. We’re leaving right now. Graham can have all the yard waste tonight.”

“But—” Rory gave her a confused look.

“Get in and drive,” Mabel said quietly but firmly. “Or I will. And you really don’t want me behind the wheel of a vehicle this big.”

Chapter 2

The next morning, Mabel woke to the persistent yowling of her cat, Pixie. She did that whenever a vehicle entered the farm’s driveway, but usually settled down after a single warning screech.

Not this time.

After the third howl, Mabel peered blearily at the time. Nine in the morning. And she’d only gone to bed four hours earlier. She’d been too wired to sleep after getting home from the confrontation with Graham, so she’d spent some time reading her aunt’s journals, hoping there might be some hints in there for how the farm could be made more marketable.

It had taken a long time before Mabel had been able to stop mentally replaying the confrontation with Graham. On the way home, Rory had tried to convince Mabel that the knife she’d seen on Graham’s belt wasn’t a weapon, just a standard tool that he probably hadn’t even remembered he was wearing. She’d explained that it was a hori-hori or “dig-dig” knife that many farmers and dedicated gardeners used for a variety of tasks. In Graham’s case, it would be useful for digging holes for planting rhubarb seedlings and then, later in the life cycle, for cutting the poisonous leaves off the harvested stalks.

Mabel deferred to Rory in all things plant-related, but this was a matter of safety and common sense. The knife and the man carrying it were dangerous. There hadn’t been any reason, like seedlings to plant or stalks to separate from leaves, to have it on him when they’d been arguing over the mulch. And Mabel was absolutely certain that the security staff wouldn’t let Graham into the courthouse while carrying the knife if he went there today as he’d threatened. That made it a weapon.

Pixie continued to yowl, making it impossible for Mabel to go back to sleep. She dragged herself out of bed and headed for her aunt’s bedroom to see who was in the parking lot outside the barn. The only person she’d been expecting at all, and not at this early hour, was Rory, who’d offered to come make sure all the supplies and tools were ready for the planting of the following year’s garlic crop. Mabel was still hoping against fading hope that she’d find a buyer for the farm before the drop-dead date of Halloween for getting the cloves into the ground. Then the buyer would be responsible for the planting or possibly transforming the fields into beds for a different crop. She didn’t care so much about the specific crop the buyer grew, as long as the land remained used for agriculture. That was what her aunt would have wanted. But if Mabel didn’t find a buyer soon, she was going to have to plant the garlic for next year, just to maintain the property value.

Mabel made her way through the clutter of her aunt’s bedroom and pulled back the curtain. Where she’d expected to see Rory’s small green pickup parked next to Aunt Mabel’s larger truck was instead a white SUV, with a real estate broker’s logo and contact information printed on the hood, trunk, and all four doors. Danny Avila, Jr., was also the town’s mayor, so the bumper was plastered with reelection stickers from at least three previous elections. According to Rory, citizens had elected or reelected him—by huge margins—each time. Not so much due to his incredible political skill however, but because no one else was interested in the part-time, low-paying, high-stress job.

Mabel rushed back to her bedroom and the rocking chair where she’d thrown yesterday’s jeans and t-shirt. They were reasonably clean, since she hadn’t been out in the fields yesterday, and the dirty work of collecting the yard waste had ended almost before it began. Besides, she didn’t have time to hunt for something fresher.

She paused before dressing in order to pat the still intermittently screeching orange cat that had moved from her original spot next to the pillows to the bottom of the bed. “It’s okay now, Pixie. I’m awake now, and I know who our visitor is. It’s someone I want to see. Maybe he’s brought a nice, young farmer looking to strike out and buy his own place, and he’ll fall madly in love with Stinkin’ Stuff Farm. A match made in heaven.”

Pixie yowled, and Mabel corrected herself as she stepped into her jeans. “You’re right. It would be even better if it were a nice, young farmer looking to buy her own place. But either way, we’d be able to sell the farm and get our lives back to normal.”

Pixie made it loudly clear that she was not amused and headed for the stairs. Mabel quickly finished tugging on her jeans and t-shirt and followed the cat down to the kitchen where the yowling resumed. At least it was no longer at ear-splitting level, more of a grumble than a yowl.

Mabel raced outside to greet her broker. Danny was of average height and stockily built, with perpetually tanned skin and what looked from a distance to be a thick head of dark, tightly curled hair but which everyone knew was a hairpiece that covered a rapidly balding head. Apparently the hair, like everything else about him, was intended to make him into a replica of his father, from his appearance to his role as the mayor. Rory had once said it was rumored Danny even wore his late father’s suits, a tribute to the older man’s frugal ways as well as to his habit of always dressing as if he were the head of a much bigger and more important municipality. Danny definitely carried his father’s battered old leather legal pad portfolio, the Sr. of the gold-etched name still visible on the front.

Despite his quirks, Danny had done his father proud, since at thirty-eight, he was already a four-term mayor. Of course, according to Rory, it had helped that his father had been the town’s quietly competent mayor for the better part of fifty years, so when he’d died and his son was on the ballot to replace him, most residents probably hadn’t even noticed the Jr. and had simply voted for the familiar name.

Standing beside Danny was a taller man wearing jeans, polo shirt, and a blazer that fit his broad shoulders and muscular arms so well it must have been custom tailored. He looked to be around the same age as Aunt Peggy had been—fifty—when she’d had her epiphany about the meaninglessness of her accounting career and had jettisoned it for an agricultural one.

“Mabel!” The mayor’s excited tone would have been more appropriate for greeting a long-lost friend or relative, but he used it to greet everyone. He usually accompanied it by a hug, but after the time Mabel ran out of patience with reminding him she preferred to maintain a substantial bit of personal space and had st. . .