Part 15 (1/2)
Cam started awake. It was dark. Disoriented, she rubbed her eyes and sat up. The newspaper slid from her lap onto the floor with a gentle whoosh. She glanced into the kitchen, where the LED on the stove shone its blue-green time into the dimness. Eight thirty. She must have needed to catch up on sleep.
Cam switched on the lamp and retrieved the jumbled sections of paper. The Metro-North section was on top. She straightened it out. The second headline down on the right caught her eye.
POLICE STYMIED IN FARM MURDER.
Cam groaned. Now it was the Farm Murder, and the story shouted out to the greater Boston area that hers was the farm. She read on.
”Well, at least they say I'm cooperating.” Cam snorted. ”Of course I'm cooperating!” But you haven't solved it, she reminded herself. She threw the section on the floor and got up. She was about to hit the computer when she realized how hungry she was. The lunch on the beach had been a long time ago.
She fixed herself a grilled ham and cheese and took it to the computer table with a gla.s.s of milk. She checked her e-mail. Alexandra had written, with a subject line of ”Web site up and running. Please check.” Cam smiled. She clicked the link in the message, which was attached to Alexandra's name, and there it was. Produce Plus Plus Farm. The young woman had done a stellar job. Cam clicked through the pages, jotting down a few notes about minor things for Alexandra to fix.
She opened the file she'd named Find The Killer. Her spreadsheet stared at her. Was there anything new she could add since Sat.u.r.day? Sure. Frank was definitely in the militia. And it looked like Bev was, too. Cam tapped in the information. What else? She hadn't added the disk in the hoop house and its connection with the Patriotic Militia, so that went in, too.
She couldn't think of anything else to add. She ran her script. The graphic display now had a connection between the Patriotic Militia and her hoop house. But if the connection had a relations.h.i.+p to the killer, the screen wasn't saying. She leaned back in the chair with her hands behind her head, trying to remember what Lucinda had said. An important person in the area was also undoc.u.mented, and maybe Mike had been blackmailing him or threatening to go public with the information. Cam didn't know who it could be, though. She hadn't been around long enough to know the important people in town. And would an important person go so far as to kill Mike to keep him quiet? According to Lucinda and Ruth, that wouldn't work, since there were plenty of others in the group who also knew.
Cam saved the files and shut down the computer. No way of solving this tonight, that was certain. She was surprised Pappas hadn't returned her call. Maybe the guy actually had a life. Too bad it didn't include actually solving murders.
Chapter 14.
Cam worked hard all Monday morning to make up for taking the afternoon off the day before. It was sticky again today. She found herself stopping frequently to wipe her forehead with the sleeve of her T-s.h.i.+rt. The leaves on the trees were still. No breeze buffered the brunt of the sun.
The season was picking up. The farm had had regular rains mixed in with lots of sun and long days. Plants loved this weather, even today's heat and humidity, and it showed. All plants loved it. Cam grunted as she hauled a garden cart full of weeds to the compost pile. Weeds sprouted and grew even faster than the crops.
She took a shade break at the desk in the back of the barn, where she kept her planting and harvesting record book. It was Albert's system, but it was a good one, albeit being on paper and not in digital form. She planned to enter everything into her farming software next winter, when she had time. For now, there was nothing wrong with a good old ledger book. She checked her planting schedule and hoped those beans she'd ordered would come in the day's mail. It wouldn't do to get behind schedule on an item as popular as skinny green beans.
As Cam went back outside, she thought about Stuart Wilson and how oddly he'd acted last week. Getting all in a huff on Volunteer Day, when Cam had gotten upset with him about destroying the beans, even though her reaction might have been a bit too strong. Getting drunk at the festival and hara.s.sing Alexandra about her sister. And even acting strange when Cam had asked him about Lucinda on Sat.u.r.day. She shook her head. It really wasn't her problem. If he showed up on Wednesday again, she'd make sure she kept an eye on him.
When Cam popped into the house for a late lunch break, she checked her voice mail. A message from one of her subscribers dismayed her.
”We've decided to cancel our subscription because of the recent difficulties,” the woman's voice stated with an apologetic tinge. ”We'd appreciate having our share price returned, but understand that we're past the reimburs.e.m.e.nt period. We just don't feel safe having an a.s.sociation with your farm any longer.”
Cam slammed her fist on the desk. Down to twenty-eight subscriptions. She couldn't afford to reimburse these people-she'd already spent the money. The murder was taking its toll on her business.
Ellie arrived right on time for her locavore badge session. All day Cam had found herself looking forward to working with the girl again. Cam, just coming out of the barn with a basket, waved at the SUV as David turned and drove down the driveway.
”How's it going, kiddo?” Cam said without thinking and then realized saying ”kiddo” made her sound like an old lady, or worse, like her father.
”Meh.”
”Meh? What's going on?” Ellie was not the sunny self Cam had seen in their previous encounters. ”Why don't you tell me while we head out back?”
”I don't know. This kid at school? Jason? He's always talking about, like, illegal aliens and stuff. Like immigrants are from other planets.” Ellie kicked a stick in the path.
So anti-immigration prejudice had filtered down to the eighth grade. No surprise, really. Cam waited.
”So I go, 'Immigrants are people, too.' And he's all, like, 'Dirty Polack.' ” Ellie looked up at Cam, frowning. ”What's up with that, right? It's, like, unless he's Native American himself, his relatives who came here were immigrants, too.”
”Correct. What do your teachers say?”
”Oh, this is lunchroom stuff. He wouldn't dare say it in history cla.s.s. Mr. Fitz would have his . . . I mean, he'd, you know, get in trouble.”
”Is your family Polish?”
”Yeah. My dad's first generation. He came over to work with his uncle in construction and then, like, just stayed. My mom's family's Polish, too, but they've been here for a while. Her name is Dabrowski. Mom and Dad used to live in Chicago. You know, before me.”
Cam remembered being fourteen. It had seemed like time before she had existed was time before reality. ”How about we tie up tomatoes today? You can almost see them grow, they're going up so fast. I'll show you how to prune them to two leaders.”
”What's a tomato leader?” Ellie looked puzzled, but at least she didn't look down in the dumps anymore.
”This kind of tomato, called an indeterminate, keeps growing and bears fruit as long as it can. Here in northern Ma.s.sachusetts, that means until the frost in the fall. We get more fruit-”
”Don't you mean tomatoes?”
Cam laughed. ”Well, sure. We just refer to them as bearing fruit. And, actually, a tomato is a fruit, botanically, because it has seeds. I think the definition is 'a flowering ovary.' I know people commonly think of fruit as sweet and vegetables as not sweet, but botany is different. Ask your science teacher sometime.”
”I will. So peppers and eggplants and cuc.u.mbers, they're all fruit?”
Cam nodded. ”And squash and beans, too.”
”Solid.”
”Anyway, if we prune the tomato plants to just two stalks-that's what a leader is-we get a bigger yield than if we let every growing tip take off. It's neater and easier to harvest, too, rather than having them sprawl all over the ground.”
”Wow. Wait'll I tell Ashley.”
”Friend of yours?”
Ellie nodded. ”She wants to be a food scientist. She's in Scouts, too. Can I bring her with me next week?”
”If she'll work, I'll take her.”
Cam showed Ellie what to do, handing her a pair of scissors and the string. They worked side by side in silence, snipping off tips that weren't the leaders, tying the unruly tops to their stakes.
”I'm glad you stood up to that boy,” Cam said. ”What was his name? James?”
”Jason.” Ellie sat back on her heels. ”He even said he'd heard my dad was illegal. I told him no possible way that was true. But he said his dad was in a, like, militia, and they knew who around here was illegal. He said Daddy was going to be in trouble, that they were going to make him go back.”
Another militia member. ”What did your dad say?”
Ellie frowned. ”I didn't tell him. He's been kind of funny lately. Sort of, you know, like he's thinking about something important. Jason's lying. Why should I bother Dad about that?”
David Kosloski was a well-established businessman in town, with his own construction firm. He was married to an American. He couldn't be here illegally. Could he?