Farm Fresh Murder (2 page)

“Holy crap,” I said, wanting to run to them and see what was going on at the same time my legs froze in place.

I couldn’t figure out who was missing from the standing group. I couldn’t see clearly who was on the ground, and I couldn’t handle the process of elimination in my mind. I focused—okay, my close friend Linda was there, I could see her berry-stained fingers from where I sat; Barry, who sold the most amazing corn, chewed at his bottom lip; Brenton, the master of homemade dog biscuits, kept lifting and then replacing his well-worn Yankees cap.

I was still taking roll in my mind when one of the officers began to shoo the crowd backward as he pulled out a roll of yellow tape that would soon mark the perimeter of the crime scene.

“Allison,” I said to myself, as she came into view. She was just as frightened as the rest of them, but doing her best to keep in control.

Though she and I were fraternal twins, she got the tall, dark, and mysterious looks of our father, and I got the small, blond, and pale looks of our mother. But at the moment, I would have said her skin tone was as green as an avocado’s innards. She was on her phone, attempting to keep her eyes away from the body.

Though I had absolutely no desire to see death, Allison needed me, so I forced myself to step out of my surreal-view-of-a-tragedy-from-a-distance moment and unfroze my legs. As I walked forward, one of the police officers glanced in my direction, a stonelike, suspicious look on her face. I involuntarily quirked a nervous smile at her. She looked away.

“Becca,” Allison said as she closed her phone and met me on the edge of the gathering. “Thank God you’re here. When you were late and this”—she waved toward the crowd—“happened, I got worried about you. Oh, Becca!” She sounded as though she were speaking the words accidentally, almost as though the sound was following her mouth’s movement, like one of those old foreign films with English dubbed in.

“Sorry, Sis, sorry.” I touched her arm to reassure her that I was indeed there and that I was fine. “What happened?”

She took a deep breath and made herself stand taller. She put her hand over mine. “Okay, it’s been a rough morning. There’s been a terrible accident—or something. Matt Simonsen was killed, Becca.”

“Matt who?” I asked.

“Simonsen.”

I didn’t know anyone named Matt Simonsen, and I felt terrible about both the fact that someone had been killed and that I didn’t know who that someone was. I thought I was good at getting to know the other vendors. These people had been my life for some time, and I was friends with many of them, but the name Matt Simonsen didn’t ring any bells.

“He just started working here last week,” Allison continued. “He grows”—she cleared her throat—“
grew
and sold peaches and peach products.”

“This is just terrible,” I muttered as I gathered enough courage to really look at the body. He was on his back, next to an old van. He was a large man, only slightly heavy but very tall. I tried not to swoon as I looked at his bloody and violently disfigured head. The entire body was in a pool of its own blood, and Mr. Simonsen’s jeans and T-shirt were soaking it up from the ground. Oddly, a bouquet of flowers had been placed on his chest. The flowers’ beauty seemed pristine and out of place on the still body. “What happened?”

“As far as I’ve been able to figure out, none of us heard a thing. The police questioned me quickly, but didn’t tell me anything except that they might want to talk to me again. I’ve tried to listen to what’s going on. Everyone who’s here got here early and unloaded without any problem. But when Abner arrived this morning, he found the body.”

“Abner?”

“Yes, he and Matt were the only ones who would have unloaded from this area. Because Matt’s van was hiding his body, the rest of us might have gone the whole day and not found him.”

I looked up and through the crowd, finally spotting Abner as he spoke to a police officer. Abner was almost five feet of old, bald, and cranky. He’d been working at farmers’ markets and roadside stands longer than any of us. He grew amazing wildflowers at some place that he kept deeply undercover. With quick hands and honed skill, he could create special and unique bouquets before customers had even pulled out their money.

From where I stood, Abner looked a mess. He was talking to the officer, but his eyes were glazed and unfocused. He kept putting his hands in his overalls’ pockets and taking them back out to wipe a red handkerchief over his bald head.

“Oh, Allison,” I said as something occurred to me. “The flowers on Mr. Simonsen, are those Abner’s?”

She nodded. “I think so. I heard Abner say as much, but he also said he didn’t put them there.”

“Oh, ick! No wonder he looks so freaked-out.”

“I think we all look a bit freaked-out, but there’s more to it.”

“What?”

“Apparently, two days ago Abner and Mr. Simonsen had a very vocal argument. I didn’t know anything about it until today, when Betsy told me that she heard part of it—though she wouldn’t give me any details. Apparently there were other witnesses, too, and . . .”

“And?”

“Well, Abner said—according to Betsy—that he was going to kill Mr. Simonsen if he didn’t leave Bailey’s.”

“Oh no . . . do you think . . . ?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

I looked at Abner again. There was no way he could have killed anyone; he was difficult to get along with, but he wasn’t homicidal. Actually, I’d never seen him get truly angry, but I had seen him be very ornery. And he’d been a friend to me when I’d needed a friend, when I’d needed guidance from someone who knew what the heck he was doing. He’d taken me under his wing; told me some of the finer points of good product display and excellent customer service. I’d worked at farmers’ markets for almost seven years, but it was Abner’s help and friendship that taught me that having a successful business went far beyond living on a farm or having the ability to speak to the soil and coax it to bring forth products that customers sought out. He’d been the one to tell me that it would be my passion for my products that would make me successful.

And now he was talking to a police officer about a bouquet of his lovely flowers that he himself had found on a dead man; a man he’d apparently threatened.

“Allison, what can we do?”

“I don’t know, Becca. I have absolutely no idea.”

The police and crime scene people were very slow about their
business. They shut the whole market down for about three hours so they could gather evidence. During this time I helped Allison with phone calls to vendors who hadn’t yet shown up. We told them not to come in and that the police would be contacting them—no one was thrilled about this, but they understood. We explained the situation so many times that the dead body became surreal to me; a story, but not an actual event.

Then those of us who were already there helped the police put up their own tent to use for more interviews. After the crime scene people took a bunch of pictures and removed Mr. Simonsen’s body, the police posted an interview schedule and allowed the market to open again.

Abner wasn’t arrested, so I tried, in vain, to corner him and see how he was holding up, but there was too much chaos for anything more than fleeting glances at each other. I hoped my eyes told him that I was there if he needed me, and his glances told me that I shouldn’t worry and he was fine. I didn’t believe his eyes in the least.

Somehow, I was first on the list of interviews.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the tent was that it was hot and stuffy. I figured this was on purpose, to “sweat” out the murderer. The officer who asked the questions had somehow mastered looking cool and collected in stifling air and while wearing a long-sleeved, well-pressed uniform.

Officer Brion was able to ask his questions without showing one drop of perspiration or allowing one hair to fall out of its slicked-back style.

The interview went something like this:

“Ms. Robins, where were you this morning between 5:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M.?”

“At my farm, about fifteen minutes that way.” I pointed and then wiped my hand over the drip of sweat falling from my right temple.

“Was anyone there with you?”

“Just my dog, Hobbit.”

“Can you prove you were there?”

“No, I don’t think I can.”

“Is that blood on your overalls and arm?”

“Oh. No, that’s blackberry jam—that’s what I make and sell—jams and preserves.” I wiped my left temple and noticed that his temples were still dry.

“Did you know Mr. Matt Simonsen?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure? You worked at the same place.”

“Working at a farmers’ market isn’t necessarily like working at the same place. Most of us work alone, and sometimes we can go weeks without having the time to socialize. My sister, Allison Reynolds, told me he just started here last week. I hadn’t met him yet.”

“Do you know Abner Justen?”

“Very well.”

“Did he speak to you about Mr. Simonsen?”

“No.”

“Ms. Robins”—the officer leaned forward, and I tried not to look scared—“do you know where Mr. Justen lives?”

“Um, well, actually, I don’t.”

“Do you know where some of the other vendors live?”

“Yes, some, but . . .”

“But what?”

The next words that were going to come out of my mouth were about Abner’s secretive ways regarding where he lived. Even with me, his good friend, he had always been paranoid about revealing the location. But I didn’t think anyone knew where he lived. I decided not to give more to the police officer than he asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

Officer Brion gave me a look that stopped just short of a sneer.

After I was given his card with instructions to call him if anything else occurred to me, I was dismissed. I failed miserably at walking out of the tent with anything resembling an innocent gait.

I wanted either to talk to Abner or to go home, but I was thrown into work instead. The other vendors who were interviewed needed some fill-in help, and Allison volunteered me.

I started with Linda’s fruits and pies. As Linda walked away from her stall, she told me to eat whatever I wanted. She wore clothes that reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder, which seemed to make her products taste even better. Like me, she was in her mid-thirties and worked her farm by herself. Unlike me, she hadn’t gone through two husbands to get to that point, but we were as close to good friends as two single, working women whose idea of a good party was an extra-early dinner, an early movie, and an early bedtime could be.

Since the murder and the questioning had done nothing to diminish my appetite for Linda’s raspberries and her razzleberry pie, I did indeed indulge in the sweet treats in between helping curious and concerned customers. In addition to baking her goodies, Linda also grew most of her own berries, some of which I purchased for my jams and preserves. She had the same talent for growing raspberries and blackberries as I had for growing strawberries. Every once in a while we traded berries—I made a killer razzleberry jam, and her strawberry pie brought some of her most loyal customers.

“Miss—I heard there’d been a murder here this morning. That can’t be true. Is that true?” one elderly lady said.

“There’s nothing to worry about.” That wasn’t true, but I didn’t know what else to say. “What can I get for you? Some berries or some pie?”

As the day wore on, the curiosity became more demanding, and once the news made it to the media outlets, the normally medium-sized Tuesday crowd began to dwindle to a sparse few who were either still very curious or hadn’t turned on their radios or televisions that day.

As I worked the Barry Good Corn stall, Allison found me and took a moment to gather her wits. She sat hidden behind an enormous table piled with end-of-the-season ears of corn.

“How’re you doing?” I asked.

“I can’t seem to process everything yet, but I think I’m exhausted.”

“Do the police suspect anyone—other than Abner?”

“No, I don’t think so. He refused to tell them his address. I went to look it up on his application form—which is over ten years old, by the way—but the address he gave is his sister’s house in town. That’s the same one that’s on his driver’s license.”

“The police should know how to figure out where he lives.”

“I’m sure they will. Why is he so weird about it?”

“His flowers are amazing, right?”

“The most amazing.”

“He’s afraid someone will figure out how he does it. He grows some flowers that shouldn’t even be able to take hold in South Carolina. He grows other flowers out of season. His favorite flower is this very thorny one—he prides himself that he can grow it and that he can place it in a bouquet so that the thorns never even graze a customer’s fingers. He’s very good at what he does and he’s very protective of how he does it.”