Farm Fresh Murder

Table of Contents

 

 

Two picnic tables stood on their sides at the end of the road, blocking my view. I took one of the worn ruts and suddenly the scene behind the tables became clear; unrealistically and frighteningly clear. Two police cars and an official-looking van, complete with a logo that read Crime Scene Unit, flanked a gathering of market vendors and something on the ground that looked like a large dead body. But it couldn’t be a body—this was a farmers’ market. Dead bodies didn’t just show up at farmers’ markets, did they?

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

 

FARM FRESH MURDER

 

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / April 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Paige Shelton-Ferrell.

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-18638-1

 

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Thanks to:

Berkley editor extraordinaire Michelle Vega and all the staff at The Berkley Publishing Group who made this come together. You make dreams come true.

All the market managers and vendors who took the time to patiently answer my questions. Any mistakes I’ve made are mine only.

Patricia Snyder and Amy Snyder Hackbart for their Mmmm-Amazing Lemon Meringue Pie recipe. Delicious!

Kelly Hindley, the first person ever to buy something I wrote. I’ve been hoping for an opportunity such as this to thank you.

Marilyn, Julie, and Lloyd Peterson; Stacy, Dan, Jonathan, Michael, and Connor Bredbeck; Pat, Eric, and Megan Baschnagel; and the best buddy ever, Heidi Baschnagel. The weekend full of farmers’ market shopping, recipes, good food, memories, and friendship is something I will cherish forever.

My numerous Blanchard and Ferrell in-laws, particularly my mother-in-law, Barbara Ferrell. Your encouragement has meant so much.

My cousin, Lisa Light, who is more like a sister than a cousin; my parents, Chuck and Beverly Shelton; my husband, Charlie Ferrell; and the most “epic-ly awesome” person I know, my son, Tyler Ferrell. I love you all so much and can’t thank you enough for your support, guidance, words of wisdom, and ability to make me laugh until I can’t breathe.

And to everyone who grows or creates farmers’ market products. Your hard work and creativity are inspiring.

Again, Allison murmured something on the other end.

“Hang on a second, Sis, I can’t hear a word.” I stuck the phone (still flipped open) into my overalls pocket, pulled off my face mask and a jam-splattered plastic glove, and turned down my version of morning coffee—today it was Springsteen. The jars I’d been boiling were nicely sterilized by now, so with a turn of a dial, I flipped off one burner. The blackberry jam would be okay to boil a minute or two without supervision. I left that burner on High and made my way out of the barn/kitchen—talking without my face mask around my preserves didn’t fall in line with my idea of sterile.

I stepped surely over the polished wood-planked floor of the barn, pushed open the large door, and was greeted by both my short-legged retriever, Hobbit, and bright daylight. The sun was up? What time was it? Was I late again?

I didn’t have a watch, but the time was shown in large block numbers on my phone. It was just after seven in the morning, almost a full hour later than I had planned on leaving.

“Damn,” I muttered to myself as I petted my happy-to-see-me-emerge-from-the-barn dog. “Hey, Allison,” I said into the phone. “Are you wondering where I am?” The destination that I was late for was Bailey’s Farmers’ Market, the best market, in my opinion, in South Carolina and the place that Allison managed with near perfection.

“Oh—I’m so glad you’re there! Thank God!” Her voice was unusually shaky.

“Allison?”

“Becca, you have to get here. Quickly.”

“Why, what’s up?”

“Just get here. Now,” she emphasized before disconnecting the call.

Concern tightened my chest. Allison was the queen of the cool cucumbers. She rarely allowed her voice to waver with uncertainty, let alone the fear I thought I’d heard.

I tried to call her back, but she didn’t answer. I tried again; she still didn’t answer. Suddenly, a thousand different pictures of horror formed in my mind. Was she hurt? How badly? Was someone else hurt? Her three-year-old son, Mathis?

With a small tug of regret about the loss of the blackberry jam I’d been boiling, I made sure all of the stove’s burners were turned off. Then, with Hobbit at my heels, I ran across the side yard of my small farm and through the open back door of my house. Everything would have to wait until I found out what was wrong with Allison. My strawberry plants needed their September dousing, and my pumpkins needed attention and water of their own, but those would have to be this evening’s tasks.

I grabbed my backpack and truck keys off the messy dining room table and ran out the front door.

“Hey, girl, watch the place for me. I gotta run. I’ll be home as soon as I can,” I said to Hobbit. To acknowledge that she understood every word, she tapped one of her overly long paws on my thigh and then went to her mat on the shaded front porch. I’d fed and watered her first thing, so she’d be all right. “Good girl.”

I locked nothing, checked nothing else, but jumped in my twenty-year-old bright orange truck that fortunately started with the first turn of the key, and took off up the dirt driveway and onto the old state highway.

Bailey’s was only about fifteen minutes away from my farm when I wasn’t in a hurry. Today, I pushed the truck to its top speed of sixty-three miles per hour and was silently grateful that my neighbor, Ted Masters, wasn’t tooling down the road in one of his John Deeres.

According to the time feature on my phone, I pulled into the middle road of Bailey’s eight minutes after I’d spoken to Allison. The metallic roof-covered market was set up in a U shape, and the vendors drove down this inside road to deliver their products. It snaked off here and jutted off there, the worn paths from truck and van tires marking the ways to the backs of the stalls set up with tables, product displays, and temporary walls usually made of canvas tarps. Allison’s office was in a small brick building that sat next to the entrance to the market in the middle of the south arm of the U. As I passed the back of the office, I looked for some sign of Allison but didn’t see her.

Right now, two picnic tables/walls stood on their sides at the curve of the U, blocking my view. I took one of the worn ruts, and suddenly the scene behind the tables became clear; unrealistically and frighteningly clear. Two police cars and an official-looking van, complete with a logo that read Crime Scene Unit, flanked a gathering of market vendors and something on the ground that looked like a large dead body. But it couldn’t have been a body—this was a farmers’ market. Dead bodies didn’t just show up at farmers’ markets, did they?

I stopped about fifty feet from the group and threw the gearshift handle into Park as I looked for Allison and tried to process the unlikely scene. The old-timer vendors, the ones who’d been selling at markets for years, the ones who were always ready to sell at 6:00 A.M., were standing together, shock and fear blanching their faces.