Mulch Ado about Murder Read online

  Books by Edith Maxwell

  A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE

  ‘TIL DIRT DO US PART

  FARMED AND DANGEROUS

  MURDER MOST FOWL

  MULCH ADO ABOUT MURDER

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Mulch Ado About Murder

  EDITH MAXWELL

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Recipes

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Edith Maxwell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2017933098

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-0029-2

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: June 2017

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0030-8

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-0030-9

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: June 2017

  For my Wicked Cozy partners in crime: Jessie Crockett/Jessica

  Estevao, Sherry Harris, Julie Hennrikus/Julianne Holmes, Liz

  Mugavero/Kate Conte, and Barbara Ross. You’re the best. Really.

  Acknowledgments

  Once again I am grateful to so many for helping me get this book into the hands of readers. I’m always stunned by the beautiful covers the gifted Robin Moline creates. Thanks to my agent John Talbot, who found me this contract in the first place. Many blessings to my always responsive Kensington editor, John Scognamiglio, and the entire Kensington team, who bring the Local Foods Mysteries to the reading public. Sherry Harris once again expertly edited the manuscript before I turned it in, finding the unwritten emotions and gaping plot canyons. My gratitude, always, to Sisters in Crime, both locally and nationally. I read a number of scenes from the book to my critique group, the Monday Night Writers, and benefited as ever from their keen eyes. And of course the Wicked Cozy Authors (see the Dedication)—my friends, my lifeboat, my inspiration—I couldn’t do it without you.

  Thank you to Matt Iden for inspiring the title, my farmer son John David for the idea of organoponics, and my son Allan for remembering details about his long-ago high school track meets. I was delighted to include a scene set at Throwback Brewery in Hampton, New Hampshire, as well as a recipe from their fabulous pub restaurant, used with permission, of course. No one is killed at the brewery or dies from eating their food! I think every book in this series has a scene set at the real Newburyport watering hole, the Grog (again, no deaths result from the experience). The Market restaurant is fictional, though—and I wish it wasn’t.

  Thanks once again to Amesbury Police Detective Kevin Donovan, who is always willing to answer my questions, often at the last minute, about police procedure. Any errors remaining in this book are because I (foolishly) thought I could swing it on my own.

  I am one of the Flick Chicks, a group of women friends who’ve been meeting monthly for more than two decades for wine, high-fat appetizers, conversation . . . and sometimes even a movie. I hope Deb Hamilton (equestrian), Judy Smith (re-enactor), Janice Valverde (Girl Scout leader), and Kim We-grzyn (volleyballer) are pleased getting a tiny walk-on role in the Memorial Day parade, which is modeled directly on the West Newbury parade we all were part of for many years when our children were younger. I also used Deb’s beach house as a model for the final climax scenes and hope she doesn’t mind.

  The character Sue Biellik was born because Daphine Neville was the very generous high bidder on my 2015 donation to the Merrimac River Feline Rescue Society. I love to offer the right to name a character in one of my books to support the cause of rescue cats, and in recent years the MRFRS Fur Ball even brings me up on stage during the live auction. Susan Biellik is Daphine’s good friend and an animal lover. I hope you enjoy your time on the farm, Sue!

  It’s been a real pleasure to stage a mystery series on a small working organic farm. It’s what I did for a living long ago, and where I set my very first crime fiction. I hope, readers, that you’ll support your local farmer. Go buy your produce, cheese, eggs, and meat from a farmers’ market, CSA, or farm stand every chance you get—the farmers appreciate and need your business.

  To my family and dear friends—I love you and am grateful beyond words for your continuing support and delight in my successes.

  Dear Readers, Librarians, Cozy Fans: I’d be nowhere without you! I thank you deeply for your kind and enthusiastic words about my stories. You have my continued gratitude for helping me spread the word about these books.

  Chapter 1

  Cam Flaherty sank her head onto the steering wheel in the parking lot outside the Seacoast Fresh greenhouse. The repeated refrain of the protesters on the sidewalk behind her swirled like angry wasps. She straightened and whacked the wheel with her fist. “I do NOT have time for this.”

  “Hydroponics has to go. Soil-free plants, no, no, no.” The small clutch of demonstrators formed an infinite loop with their signs.

  Cam climbed out of her old Ford truck and retrieved her delivery from the back. A dark-haired man hurried toward her in the parking lot, but he stared at the ground and was on a collision course with her. She cleared her throat.

  He glanced up with a pale, sweaty face and haunted eyes. “I’m sorry.” He swerved around her.

  She whipped her head to gaze after him. She’d never seen him before. Had he been in the greenhouse? He looked terrible, no matter where he’d been. Like he’d seen a ghost.

  Nicole Kingsbury, the owner of the new hydroponic greenhouse in town, had contracted with Cam to start basil and lettuce seedlings for her at Cam’s Attic Hill Organic Farm. Cam stared at the two flats of baby basil plants in her arms. She hadn’t expected to encounter her own mother in the small group of locals marching in a circle on the sidewalk in opposition to Nicole’s venture.

  Deb Flaherty had arrived last week with Cam’s father, William, for their first visit since Cam took over the farm from her great-uncle, Albert St. Pierre, a year and a half ago. And somehow Deb had jumped into the fray of the debate about what “organic” should mean. Nicole said she
planned to feed her water-grown crops organically. Purists like this group of protesters maintained that organic should mean food grown in soil, not in solution, that organic growing included the whole naturally balanced system of soil, water, micro-organisms, beneficial insects, and healthy crops and animals. Cam held an opinion somewhere in the middle.

  It hadn’t occurred to her parents to ask their daughter if she had time for them to visit, time to show them the sights of northeastern Massachusetts.

  “No,” Cam muttered to herself, “I certainly do not have time.” The end of May was crazy busy on a small organic farm. She had a zillion seedlings to plant out in the fields now that the frost-free date was past. She needed to harvest asparagus, rhubarb, and scallions. And she definitely didn’t need her quirky, peripatetic academic parents to be hanging around her farm and the small town of Westbury, where it was located. One town in from the coast, two towns south of New Hampshire, as she liked to tell prospective customers.

  Nicole had let out a nervous, jerky laugh when Cam had asked her about the name of her business.

  “Isn’t Seacoast Fresh a little odd, since Westbury is a good ten miles inland?” Cam asked, when Nicole showed up at her farm a couple of months earlier.

  “Sure, but I like the name,” Nicole said. “And I’ll be using marine products in the feeding solution.” That day Nicole wore black jeans with a red jacket. She’d worn red and black every time Cam had seen her since, which went with her high-energy personality. It was like being in the presence of a hummingbird when she was around Nicole: always moving, and always moving fast.

  “How did you find me, anyway?” Cam asked.

  “Bobby said to call you.”

  “Bobby Burr?” The handsome carpenter had rebuilt Cam’s barn last summer.

  “He’s my cousin,” Nicole had said. “He’s helping me put up the greenhouse.”

  Now one of the protesters shouted, staring at Cam as she reached for the greenhouse door, “Why are you dealing with her? You should join us instead.”

  At least the shouter wasn’t her mother. Cam shook her head without speaking and let herself in. The greenhouse door clicked shut behind her.

  “Nicole,” she called out, “I’m here with your seedlings.” The air pressed in warm and humid, with a familiar scent of moist potting soil and plastic. She sniffed, detecting an acrid note of chemicals, too. That was odd for a supposedly organic business.

  The only sounds were the whir of the big ventilation fan in the end wall and the now-faint repeated calls from the demonstrators. Parallel rows of white pipes at waist level stretched out in front of her. Two-inch holes pierced the tops, some with green leaves spilling out of the holes, others awaiting the potential crop she was delivering. Cam needed to get back to her own farm this afternoon. Days stretched long a month before the summer solstice, and she usually worked outside right up until dusk.

  “Nicole? You here?” Cam’s voice didn’t quite echo, but it rang out like she was the only human in the structure.

  Strange. Nicole had said she’d be on-site all day. Like Cam, she was going nuts getting her business under way in time to take advantage of the plentiful light of a New England summer. She had a well-equipped new greenhouse, though, and a visible spot right on Main Street near the center of town. Nicole had moved to Westbury from Florida in a postdivorce scenario, according to Bobby. Cam didn’t know much about her except how she dressed and that she was a devout Catholic. Bobby had told Cam that Nicole’s divorce proceedings were caused in part by her affair with someone she’d met at a religious retreat and that she was anguished at being out of favor with her church because of the divorce.

  Nicole still didn’t answer. Cam shrugged and headed for the opposite end of the long structure. She approached the worktables where she’d seen Nicole direct-seed crops and assemble the nutritional slurry that was sucked into the feeding pipes running under the plants’ roots. The open slurry vat, three feet in diameter and about the same in height, stood in the far corner behind white plastic shelving.

  Cam set her flats on the trestle table next to a travel coffee mug. She dug a scrap of paper and a pen out of her messenger bag. The pen poised, she shook her head before stashing them again. Instead she sent Nicole a quick text.

  Left you the seedlings. Let me know about more. Sorry about the protest—not my doing.

  Cam turned to go. A ding sounded a few yards away. Cam twisted her head to look. Had Nicole gone out and left her phone behind? The sound came from beyond the open shelves holding various planting supplies and tools. Cam looked harder and gasped. She took a step, but her foot felt anchored in thick mud and her gaze would not leave the far corner. She took another step, and another, until she was dashing, barely breathing, nearly tripping to the vat.

  “No,” Cam wailed.

  Nicole sprawled jackknifed over the vat, her red shirt hiked partway up her back. Her head hung just above the slurry. Her left hand dangled outside the vat clutching a string of tiny, bright red beads with black dots at their ends. The gold cross on the rosary glinted in the filtered light. Nicole’s eyes didn’t glint. Nicole was dead.

  Chapter 2

  Or was she? Cam reached out a shaking hand to feel Nicole’s neck. She couldn’t detect a trace of a pulse under the cool skin, which had a bluish tinge. A shudder rippled through Cam. Goose bumps popped up on her arms and legs. Nicole was beyond help. Poor Nicole. Cam shook her head fast and pressed nine-one-one on her phone, which she still gripped.

  She’d found a body in her own greenhouse a year ago, but he’d been a victim of murder. She narrowed her eyes, blinking away her reaction. Surely this wasn’t murder, too. Had Nicole tripped? But how had she died? Did she have a heart attack? She was young, around forty, Cam thought. Or maybe she’d killed herself. But Cam couldn’t see blood or a wound.

  “Hydroponics has to go. Soil-free plants, no, no, no,” drifted in through the plastic like a taunt to death.

  When the dispatcher answered, Cam told her what she’d found and agreed to stay on the premises, not touching anything.

  “Is the person you found in need of medical help, Ms. Flaherty?” the dispatcher asked.

  “No. She’s dead.” Cam’s voice trembled. She swallowed hard. Her stomach jounced like she rode in a boat on rough seas. She sucked in a breath. That man with the haunted eyes she’d seen before she came in. He might have done this to Nicole.

  A minute later, sirens roared up to the property. The Westbury Public Safety Complex was only a quarter mile down the road. Cam’s childhood friend Sergeant Ruth Dodge hurried into the greenhouse, followed at a slower pace by George Frost, the town’s chief of police.

  Cam stuck her hand in the air and waved frantically. “I’m back here,” she called, her voice scraping. At nearly six feet tall, Cam knew they could see her over the top of the shelving unit.

  “What do we have?” Ruth asked when she reached Cam’s side. Hefty to Cam’s slim, she was nearly as tall, one thing of many that had united the two when they’d played together during Cam’s summers on Great-Uncle Albert and Great-Aunt Marie’s Westbury farm. Ruth was in the official black uniform of the force, her waist covered by a wide, heavy duty belt. She moved between Cam and Nicole’s still form.

  “I came over to deliver some seedlings I’d started for Nicole,” Cam began. She waited to go on until Chief Frost ambled up. “She didn’t answer me when I called out. I’d just sent her a text when I heard her phone ping. I saw red in this corner and I came over to check. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “I assume you didn’t touch anything.” Ruth circled the vat and bent over to peer at the rosary.

  Cam hadn’t noticed at first that the string of beads seemed to have a few gaps. “I felt her neck for a pulse.” Cam’s throat thickened until it threatened to choke off her own pulse. “I didn’t touch anything else over here. My seedling flats are on that table.” Cam pointed as she swallowed and took in a deep breath.

  “What’s in this
thing?” George asked, frowning at the vat.

  “I don’t know exactly what goes into it,” Cam said. “But it’s the nutritional slurry that feeds the plants she’s growing. She says it’s organic.” She brought her hand to her mouth. “I mean, said.” Her voice quavered.

  “And maybe it isn’t? That what those ladies out there complaining about?” he asked. He folded his arms across his chest and frowned.

  Those ladies being her farm’s most avid volunteers and customers: Felicity Slavin, plus Cam’s mother and a couple of other locals. Cam blew out a breath. “It’s kind of complicated. You probably don’t want me to explain it right here and now.”

  “No, I guess I don’t,” Frost answered.

  Two more people rushed in, this time carrying bright red bags. When they arrived where Cam stood with the officers, Frost shook his head. “No need for medical attention, I’m afraid. We’ll need a pronouncement instead.”

  “You got it, Chief,” one said. He carefully approached Nicole’s body. Cam watched as he listened for breath, checked the pulse in her neck for what seemed like a long time, and shined a little flashlight in her eyes.

  “I can use the paddles to make sure she can’t be shocked back, but we’d have to get her out of there and onto her back,” the paramedic said to Chief Frost.

  “No.” Frost shook his head. “We haven’t even started with the crime scene. Just pronounce.”

  The paramedic checked his watch and somberly said, “Time of death, fifteen twenty-six.”

  The other paramedic stared at Nicole. “Reminds me of another death I attended,” he said.