Fruit of All Evil Read online

  “Linda, I’m sorry if I said something that . . . well, it wasn’t my intention,” I lied. “We were having such a good time. I got carried away with . . . with investigating, I guess. Your happiness is very important to me. Please forgive me if I offended you.” I wasn’t lying about that.

  “No, it’s all right.” She forced a smile. “But I really need to get home now. Shall we?”

  The ride back to her house was quiet and strained. I wanted us to talk further, but nothing I could say sounded right. Unless she fired me from my Number One duties, I’d still be there for her in every way. I was still going to make her wedding the surprise of a lifetime, if Drew wasn’t a killer, and if she forgave me.

  What I wanted to tell her was that I was doing all I could to rule people out, and this was the only way I could think of to rule Drew out. She claimed he was with her—and she was the only one that I knew of who could dispute that.

  I wasn’t equipped to deal with the possibility that she had been the killer or had been in on the murder. I didn’t accept either of those because I knew her so well and cared for her so much. If she’d been involved, I would be devastated.

  Linda seemed less icy by the time I dropped her off, but not back to normal.

  As I drove away from her cottage, my phone rang.

  This time, Sam was calling me.

  Seventeen

  “Madeline was strangled,” Sam said. “Asphyxiation, definitely. Why?” He’d called me to ask where Sally was staying. After I told him, I asked him what the official cause of Madeline’s death was.

  “I thought as much,” I said, noting silently that knowing didn’t tell me anything more than I knew. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for, but if nothing else, Sam hadn’t put up a fight about giving me the information. I was almost feeling downright official. “What about the blood and the lines of wounds on her hands? What were those?”

  “We’re not sure, but we think they’re defensive wounds of some sort. We’re working on putting together a sequence of events, but don’t have it yet.”

  “So someone strangled her with a checkered scarf.” I said it aloud but was talking to myself more than to Sam.

  “Scarf? That’s right, that’s what you thought it was. No, Becca, that wasn’t a scarf, it was a shirt—a T-shirt. I didn’t tell you before, but I don’t suppose there’s any harm in you having that information now.”

  “A T-shirt?” I couldn’t identify what I’d seen around Madeline’s neck as being a T-shirt. “Was it Madeline’s?”

  “We have no idea. It was a size Large, but we don’t know if it was a man’s or a woman’s shirt. We’re trying to track down the manufacturer and where it is or was sold. It’s actually pretty old, and the only mark it has is the L on the tag. Madeline wasn’t a Large, but the shirt looked like it would fit her just fine.”

  “Someone strangled her with a shirt?” I repeated. Whether it was a T-shirt or a scarf, the person who did the deed had to have been pretty strong to pull off such a maneuver.

  “Yes. There were no finger-shaped contusions on her throat or neck. A sleeve was tied to the hem, and then pulled tight to cause the asphyxiation.”

  I veered my truck to the left, onto a road I hadn’t traveled in some time. It was a road that would eventually lead to Columbia, the route that Sally would take when she went home. I hadn’t been to Columbia in over a year, and I wasn’t going today. I had another destination in mind and it, coincidentally, was on the same road, though not far from town.

  “Whoever killed her must have been pretty strong.” I voiced what I’d been thinking a moment before. “Sam, that would have to rule out Jeanine Baker. She’s strong, very strong, but she’s smaller than Madeline, and she couldn’t possibly handle all that must have gone on in that room.”

  “I’ve thought of that, Becca, but you never know. I’d still like to find her and talk to her.”

  I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.

  “Have you talked to Levi, the cook?” I asked.

  “He’s the only person who admits to being in the house during the time of the murder, but we don’t have any evidence that he was involved. Plus, we don’t think he was. He’d worked for her for a long time, and she paid him very well. If you remember, Madeline’s room and the kitchen are not only on separate floors, but at opposite ends of that huge house. It’s more than conceivable that the murder occurred without Levi hearing much of anything. Someone could have come in through the front door, and Levi wouldn’t have seen a thing. If, as he says, he was in the kitchen the whole time, other than going out to the garage in search of pastries, I understand how he might have missed any commotion. He’s pretty upset.”

  “His apron, his clothes were stained. At the time, I thought they were food stains, but they could have been more than that.”

  “We examined and tested his clothes and apron. There was no blood, human or otherwise.”

  “No chance he was involved?”

  Sam paused, then said, “It isn’t wise to totally disregard anyone at this point, but I don’t think so.”

  I sighed. “Anything else on the bank customers?”

  “Since the last time we talked? No.”

  I’d repeated the question with the hope that I’d push some button about Jeanine’s foreclosure notice, but my method didn’t work. It was time for me to strongly urge Allison to tell Sam what she knew.

  “Well, she didn’t just kill herself,” I said.

  “That would be correct.”

  “Do you have any leads you’re following more than the others?”

  “Maybe.”

  Excitement zipped through me. Was it possible that the police were on to something, something I was still grasping to find? “Come on, tell me that, please. Do you think you might have this solved quickly?”

  “I want to solve any murder quickly, but I’m definitely not going to tell you what we think are the best leads at this point. That would be very irresponsible.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “Gotta go, Becca.”

  I closed my phone, slipped it into my pocket, and made my way toward my next destination: Loder Dairy.

  I had a sketchy memory of touring it when I was a child. Even though she homeschooled Allison and me, our mother made sure we took the same field trips that other elementary school-age children did. Loder Dairy was always a big one.

  I remembered lots of cows, lots of strong scents, lots of mooing, and lots of people in white coats and white shower caps. I also remembered what a shock it was to see where the milk that was delivered to our home originated. It was one thing to look at a picture book about cows and their milk, but it was a totally different thing to see machines hooked up to udders and making plenty of noise as they pulled the milk from the cows. In fact, I had been momentarily traumatized by the whole thing, thinking the cows didn’t look like cows but space aliens. Allison had rolled her eyes at my horror and my mother smiled and held my hand a little tighter.

  At the end of the tour, the guide allowed Allison and me to milk a cow by hand. That took away the fear, and I still had a clear memory of the cow turning her head to look at me as I milked her, or attempted to. I was certain that she smiled, which made the whole trip worthwhile. A cow had smiled at me! How many people could say that?

  And though Loder Dairy was a Monson-area landmark, it originally gained its stellar reputation because of its ever-present delivery trucks and delivery people. Beginning very early in the morning, the simple white trucks with pictures of a smiling cows on the panels were all over Monson and the surrounding countryside. The drivers were friendly and courteous, and quickly got from their trucks to customers’ front porches and back to their trucks again. I hadn’t had milk or butter delivered since I was a child.

  I stopped my truck across the road in front of the dairy. It was an impressive facility that took up at least a hundred acres. Most of the buildings were white, except for a tall, round, bright blue silo behind one of
the smaller buildings.

  There was a small number of black-and-white cows in the very green pasture to the east of the buildings. Though the pasture was lush, there was an area right next to a large barn that was well trampled and, from my vantage point, looked muddy.

  Visiting Loder Dairy was another way for me to get to know Madeline’s family better. Sally had said that Shawn and Mid had been ungrateful kids but had turned humble when given the dairy. I couldn’t imagine giving something so magnificent to someone I didn’t like, even if they were family.

  There was something that sat funny with me about what Sally had said, and I wondered if Shawn and Mid would give me their version of how they’d acquired the farm. Plus, visiting them would give me a good reason to revisit some childhood memories.

  I put my truck in Park, got out, and crossed the road. There was a gravel driveway that led to a big house with a wide porch. I followed it to the house and climbed the porch stairs. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I peered in a few windows as I walked along the porch that stretched around the side of the house, but all the blinds were shut tight.

  The biggest of the dairy’s buildings was directly next to the house. For a few moments I stood on the porch with my hands on my hips. I could see a good deal of the property, but I didn’t see any people. As I stood there, I thought about calling out to see if anyone would hear me, but then I thought again.

  Sure, I wanted to talk to Shawn and Mid; I wanted to know what they had to say about their family history and the circumstances behind Madeline giving them the dairy. But I also liked to snoop. From what I could see, no one would notice if I just took about ten steps and made my way through a space between the back of the big building and a whitewashed fence that separated it from the muddy area between it and the pasture. I didn’t have much of a plan for what I’d do when I made it to the other side of the building, but at the moment that didn’t concern me.

  Testing fate, I waited a minute for someone to discover me. When no one appeared from anywhere, I dashed to the hidden space that, unfortunately, wasn’t as wide as it had seemed to be from the porch.

  Only the cows could see me now, and I wasn’t worried about being heard; there was a constant stream of noise: mooing and machinery, some far off, some seemingly close. The fence was simple, posts spaced about five feet apart and two cross slats between each pair of posts. It would be easy for a human to get through the open spaces.

  I had to turn sideways so I faced the pasture as I moved along the tight space. When I was halfway to my destination, a calf trotted across the pasture and made her way purposefully my direction. If I was going to get caught sneaking around the dairy, I didn’t want it to be when I was in a small space behind a building. I swiped my hand through the air, hoping to send her back the other way. Then, of course, I realized how ridiculous I was being; I doubted she understood my hand waves. I continued sidestepping and ignored the calf—until she ran into the fence, uttered a squeaky moo, and shook her head. Once I knew she hadn’t been hurt, I just wanted her to go away.

  “Hello. Yes, you caught me. Now I’ve got to be on my way.”

  The calf didn’t moo again, but she continued to watch me maneuver over what she surely thought was her property.

  I made it to the end of the path and stepped into a semi-open space between the big building and another one. There was a door to the big building that I could go through without the rest of the world seeing me.

  I craned my neck in every direction but still didn’t see anyone. I hurried up a short metal stairway, opened the door, and hurried inside. I closed the door and leaned against it as I looked around. There was a bunch to see.

  This was where the cows were hooked to the milking machines. There were four even rows of machines laid out on the concrete floor. The floor was wet, as though it had been recently hosed down. And there were no cows anywhere. Did cows get milked only in the morning? Being the owner of a farm should give one instant knowledge about such things, but since my farm was filled with strawberries and pumpkins, I was at a loss about cows’ milking schedules.

  My covert operation was still working for me; there were no people anywhere. So far, so good, I thought as I descended another small stairway and went to inspect the milking machines. I was fascinated by the alien childhood memory and wondered if they’d make the same impression.

  Truthfully, they were wicked. I knew they didn’t hurt the animals. Nevertheless, the whole mechanism—the tubes, the things that attached to the teats, even the clear tubs for gathering the milk—looked alien to me; unnatural. I decided my childhood impression was right on target.

  But what was most curious was that the first machine I inspected hadn’t milked a cow in the recent past, as far as I could tell. The tubes were disconnected and draped over a red metal fence/divider that kept the cows a safe distance from the machines. But it was more than just the tubes; the entire machine was in pieces, a jigsaw puzzle that would be hard to put back together.

  In fact, the entire row of machines I was standing in front of was disassembled. Out of the four rows, it looked as if two of them were in working order and two of them weren’t. It was hard to tell for sure because the rows went on for a long distance, and I was just short enough that I couldn’t see all the way to the ends of them.

  Maybe they used only two rows at a time, taking apart and cleaning the other two. It seemed like a sanitary plan, and the building itself looked pretty spotless. I wasn’t sure that I was looking for anything specific, but there were no puddles of anything that might cause alarm.

  Deciding I’d seen whatever there was to see, I made my way back outside and down the steps. Outside again, I felt very exposed. I glanced in every direction and saw that no one was paying me any attention; no one was anywhere. I couldn’t believe my luck. Was I going to be able to trespass and snoop and not be caught?

  Though I was feeling brave, smart, and somewhat cocky, I hunched over a little and hurried to the smaller white building that was next on my hunt. There was no stairway on this one, and the door opened just as easily as the first one had.

  The smaller building, just like the bigger one, was empty of people but held machinery. It wasn’t the kind that was used to milk cows. The scent told me that I was in a room that turned the milk into butter. The air was thick with a sweet, creamy freshness, and I was once again impressed at how clean everything was.

  I didn’t take a lot of time to inspect the pot-bellied machine that took up most of the space, but I took a quick walk around it just to see if I could figure out how it worked. I couldn’t, but I thought I’d discovered the entrance and exit points for the products. The best part of the entire excursion was what I found next. It was something that brought my childhood back in a strong wave of happy memories.

  At the end of the machine, on large worktables, were butter stamps that pressed designs into finished butter. The Loder Dairy butter that was delivered to our front porch when I was a child had always had a stamp. The one-pound packages were wrapped in thick, waxy paper. Every time we got a Loder delivery, Allison and I would guess which stamp the butter would have. There were a number of different designs: a cow, a flower, stalks of wheat, a pineapple, and two acorns. Whichever one of us guessed correctly which stamp was on our butter that day got to be the first one to put some of it on her toast. It was great fun, almost something magical, for two little girls who lived in the country and didn’t see one moment of television.

  The stamps hadn’t changed, including their star borders. I remembered that when you felt the design through the waxed paper, you could feel the impressions of the border, but no matter how much you felt and prodded, it was nearly impossible to know the design inside.

  I had the sudden urge to steal a stamp, one with a cow on it. It would make a great gift for Allison. I silently debated just how awful such a theft would be.

  In the end, I didn’t take the stamp. Regretfully, I put it back with the others and walked away
from the preparation tables. Perhaps I’d ask Shawn and Mid about the stamps when I was given a proper tour, and see if they’d let me buy one.

  My invisibility luck changed as I walked out of the butter building and toward the large blue silo. Suddenly, three people, all of them in white coats and white shower caps, were walking in my direction. They were still a good fifty feet away, in the middle of a conversation, and didn’t notice me right off. I leapt forward and put my back against the silo. As their voices got closer, I moved around to the back of the building. When I was halfway, I was once again facing the pasture. The cows were more interested in eating than in me, though a few of them did look up and twitch their ears before going back to their lazy, crooked chewing. Except my new friend, the little calf that was more curious than any cat I’d ever known.

  It hadn’t moved far from where I’d last seen it, but when it eyeballed me, it exuberantly, if not skillfully, trotted my direction. It stopped and faced me again from the other side of the fence.

  Her calf moos startled some of the other cows. They looked up again, this time with more focus.

  “You need to go back to your mother,” I said quietly.

  She didn’t, but mooed back as though she’d like to continue the conversation.

  “Sheesh.”

  There was another white building on the other side of the silo, but its back was right against the fence, and I couldn’t tell if there was a door on that side of it. I had no choice but to make my way to the front. I could go back the way I came, but I suspected that the three white coats had gone into the butter building, and I didn’t want to give myself up that easily.

  Moo.

  I was going to have to decide what to do quickly. My friend was causing enough of a scene that the other cows were becoming more curious, and one was even coming to join the party. Who knew cows communicated so well with each other?

  “Troublemaker,” I said.

  I think the calf laughed, but I didn’t stick around long enough to ponder it. Keeping my back tight against the silo, I maneuvered a little further. The calf watched my every move, even craned her neck to evaluate my progress.