Bushel Full of Murder (11 page)

I stepped out into the heat, crossed the street, and climbed the stairs up to the brick building. Inside, it was comfortably cool, but not as frigid as the gray building. I took the short
flight of stairs two at a time up to the second floor, walked past a receptionist in the hallway who had seen me enough times that I was of no real interest to her, and through the door marked simply “Police.”

Harry was easy to spot. He was standing next to Sam’s desk as Sam sat in his chair, his focus on his computer monitor. Neither of them noticed me enter.

“Becca, what’s up?” Officer Vivienne Norton said as she stopped in front of me. Officer Norton was a contradiction with her thick makeup, big bleached blond hair, and burly muscular frame that any guy would be proud to have.

“Just stopping by to see Sam but it looks pretty busy around here.”

Officer Norton nodded and said, “It is, but go on in. I suppose he can tell you himself if he’s too busy to gab.”

“Thanks.”

It was, indeed, busy. I knew most of the Monson police officers but not all of them. I darted and dodged around a few of them before I made it to Sam’s desk. I tried not to be in the way when I visited the station, but it would have been an impossible task today; there were just too many people in the big room.

“Hey, Becca,” Sam said quickly and distractedly.

“Becca.” Harry smiled and lifted his hat briefly.

“Hi,” I said. I looked at Harry. “What’s going on?”

“Sam’s looking at some of my case files regarding the theft of the deposit money.”

“Oh. May I look, too?” I asked.

Sam looked over at Harry.

“I think it’ll be all right,” Harry said. “There’s nothing there we’ve tried to keep secret.”

I stepped around to the spot behind Sam and looked at the screen to see a page filled with a bunch of disconnected numbers. I’d have to lean down and in to read it closely, but I could understand that it must be about money.

“When you followed the money, where did it go?” I said. We’d talked about Peyton’s account and the truck seller’s account, but I suspected they were looking at the money that disappeared after the assault on the manager.

Dating Sam had given me a front row seat to the world of criminal activity. There were still plenty of people behaving illegally. Bad things happened, but more and more bad guys were getting caught because it was becoming so difficult to get away with anything. Security cameras were helpful, DNA could be examined, a skin cell or two were exactly like leaving your driver’s license at the scene of a crime. It was astonishing how many criminals left their phones behind.

And theft, embezzlement. How did anyone accomplish such a thing anymore? Offshore bank accounts? Real money was rarely touched nowadays. Transactions were electronic and made money all but invisible, though no less valuable. Of course, people like me still worked in a world of mostly cash, but I was getting closer and closer to setting up a merchant account so that I could take credit cards simply by plugging a small card reader into my phone. Money was vapor, but still necessary.

“The restaurant manager was taking the money to the bank.
She was accosted by someone who fit the description of your cousin, though the perpetrator was disguised enough to confuse the witness during a lineup. Your cousin couldn’t be identified with one hundred percent certainty,” Harry said.

“That seems like a good thing for Peyton.”

“It’s why she’s free. But the witness is still pretty sure it was her. Same build, same type of hair. But the thief wore a cap and sunglasses . . . and seemed to have a facial scar.”

“Seemed to? Peyton doesn’t have a scar.”

“It’s what the witness saw. It could have been makeup.”

“As the manager was walking down the street with a bank bag of money, someone who looked mostly like Peyton but with a scar on their face assaulted the manager and stole the money?” I said, thinking I should throw in something about a one-armed man, but I held back.

“Yes.”

“It was a deposit. A large one, right? Fifty thousand dollars?” I said.

“Right. Well, the manager had been out of town for the entire week. Peyton had been in charge, and she didn’t take any deposits in during the week. She claims she was told to keep the money in the safe and that the manager would take it in when she got back. The manager denies giving such an instruction.” This was a repeat of the information Harry had given me earlier, but I listened extra closely just in case he added something he hadn’t told me before. He didn’t.

“That’s some busy restaurant.” I whistled.

“And that was a slow week. It’s a very popular place.”

Sam turned to Harry again. “Video?”

“Sure. Again, we haven’t tried to keep it a secret. We had the local news stations run it.”

“Uh-oh, do I want to see it?” I said.

Sam shrugged. “It’s inconclusive.”

“Okay, roll it.”

Sam moved and clicked the mouse, and a black-and-white video appeared on the screen.

“This is the manager. The money bag is insider her bigger bag,” Harry said as he pointed at a person dressed in shorts and a T-shirt with a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. She walked down the sidewalk at a confident, quick clip. She looked nothing like Peyton. She was tall with an athletic body. Even with the poor quality of the security camera video, I noticed her muscular legs and arms. A ponytail stuck out of the back of the baseball cap on her head.

Just at the second before she would have stepped out of range of the camera, another person, someone dressed in long sleeves, long pants, and an even bigger baseball cap than the one the manager wore ran up to her and pushed her back a step or two and then down to the ground, hitting her on the arm with a pipe. The attacker dropped the pipe, violently grabbed the messenger bag, and then ran in the other direction out of the range of the camera.

The manager held on to her arm, rolled back and forth a couple times, and then gathered herself. An elderly man passing by helped her up, and seemed to want to make sure she was okay. She doubled over for a second and he pulled out a cell phone. But she stood upright another second later and waved away his cell phone efforts. She grabbed her own
phone from her pocket and then hurried out of the picture, leaving the elderly man to rub his chin as he watched her go.

“It was quick,” I said. “And the person who took the bag was really only in the picture for a couple seconds and only part of them could be seen.”

“Yep, that’s why it’s inconclusive,” Sam said.

“Why would you think that might be Peyton?” I turned to Harry.

“Watch it again. The build of the person, and if you look really closely, you can see some hair sticking out from under the cap. It looks like her short, dark, curly hair.”

“But lots of people have short, curly, dark hair,” I protested.

“Yes, but look again. Look at the build—very feminine. Very easily could be Peyton.”

“All right, play it again, Sam,” I said. Harry and Sam both smiled at me.

Sam played the video again, and I looked for the curled hair, and the build of the obviously female attacker. And I saw what they were saying. Sort of. There was certainly enough doubt in my mind that it could be called “reasonable” if the video was the only evidence used to try to convict my cousin. A jury could never determine for certain that that was Peyton, I didn’t think.

I was relieved a little, but not enough because Harry was correct—there was a chance that it was Peyton.

“Peyton is not a mean person,” I said. “I cannot imagine her knocking someone over with that sort of force, and hitting someone? I can’t see her doing such a thing. I can’t vouch for the amount of strength someone might need to do that,
but Peyton’s just . . . not like that.” I knew it wasn’t enough to deter Harry.

“First of all, though the manager’s arm was pretty bruised, it wasn’t bad. The hit wasn’t hard. The resulting concussion from the fall was minor, but any concussion is bad. It could have been much worse, or it could have been a blow to the head with the pipe, which . . . well, who knows? Besides, I thought you hadn’t seen her for some years. People change, Becca, particularly if they are desperate, and people get desperate about money,” Harry said.

“Right,” I said. “Sam, one more time, please.”

As he played the video one more time, I looked at it extra hard. And I still didn’t feel strongly one way or another about the identity of the person with the curly hair and the pipe.

It just wasn’t enough.

Sam had to switch gears when one of the other officers called him over to another desk. Harry sat in Sam’s chair and played the video again. I decided I didn’t want to watch it anymore, so I tried to scoot away and out of the office without much fanfare.

However, I didn’t get far out of the station when Harry caught me going down the stairs.

“Where’re you going, Becca?” he said.

“Bailey’s. Why?”

“Sam wondered if you’d want to come with me first.”

“Where are you going?” I resisted the urge to check the time on my phone. I was sure I was later than I should be.

“I told Sam I was going to drive out to Betsy Warren’s house, just to see if she’s there by some chance.”

“Really? What would she have to do with Peyton’s Arizona issues?”

“Allegedly she had an issue with Mr. Ship. Allegedly so did Peyton. Neither of them is telling the truth about it. I’m trying to understand Peyton better. I won’t be official, and you won’t, either. We’ll just be casual, friendly-like. Sam doesn’t think we’d be in any danger. Wanna—?”

“Yes!” I said before he could finish the invitation.

“Good. I think you should drive. If she’s there, your truck will be nonthreatening. She might not want to answer the door if she sees some big old Indian with a cowboy hat knocking. Your truck will ease the way.” He smiled, crinkling his eyes and causing me to smile back at him. “Again, Sam thinks there’s no chance at all that you and I will be in danger, but you still have to promise to let me be in charge if I need to be.”

“Deal. Let’s go.”

I knew exactly where Betsy lived, even though I’d been there only one time before when she was ill and needed someone to pick up some tomatoes she’d promised a customer. As Linda and I had discussed, they lived close to each other, only a couple blocks apart, but their worlds were very different. Linda and Drew lived in a residential neighborhood that happened to have big backyards. Linda’s was perfect for growing a variety of berries and other fruits to use in her pies. Linda and Betsy had infrequently helped each other by getting items to and from the market if one of them couldn’t make it. The one time I’d helped Betsy was when Linda had been out of town.

Though Betsy’s street was also considered residential, once you turned onto it, you were transported into a world
of small farms. The houses were all older miniature versions of “regular” farmhouses. The plots of land weren’t all that much smaller than those on Linda’s street, but the style of homes along with fewer trees and more crop rows made Betsy’s street seem like it was out in the country, not just a turn or two away from town.

I loved my house and my farm, but I’d always loved Betsy’s street, too. The houses, most of them with some peeling paint, were homey and welcoming, and the plots of land always seemed just the right size for a one-person farm. Even when I was a little girl and had no idea what my future would be, I enjoyed riding through the neighborhood with my parents and thinking about the types of crops I’d like to grow.

True to form, Betsy’s house had some peeling white paint on the clapboard siding. However, it stood sturdy and straight with two stories, tall windows, and a front porch made for rocking chairs and lots of glasses of iced tea. I parked the truck and Harry and I hurried up the three short steps onto the porch. Two green wicker rocking chairs were angled perfectly for the small center table to hold beverages and books at arm’s length. A paperback was currently open facedown on the table, and the cushions on both the chairs were worn and indented, making me think they’d been sat in often.

The screen door was closed and locked, but the inner door was wide open and I could see into the dining room. A long walnut table filled the middle of the space and currently held a few boxes. There were some built-in shelves along the back wall where Betsy displayed lots of different patterns of china. The one other time I’d been to her house,
I had wanted to inspect the patterns but hadn’t had the time. The wall of shelves was still just as inviting.

I knocked on the screen door. “Betsy! You home?”

Even though I’d tried the handle on the screen door already, I tried it again. Still didn’t open.

“Would it be like her to leave her door open if she left?” Harry said.

“Maybe. I used to keep my doors unlocked. Lots of people around here do, but I didn’t see her truck. Come on, let’s check around back.”

Harry followed me as we walked over her small front lawn and then along a side patch that could have used some grooming, but wasn’t too unruly.

The barn in the back was more like an oversized garage. It was behind the house, at the end of a gravel driveway that I’d heard Betsy say she wanted to have filled with concrete at some point. The garage was white clapboard like the house, but with lots more peeling paint. It was the shape of a barn, but the one lifted garage door told us that her truck was there, tucked in at just the right angle that no one could see it from the front of the house.

She had about two acres in the back. The acres were filled with lined-up rows of different-sized tomato plants. The growing season in this part of South Carolina was long, and Betsy knew how to stagger her crops so she was able to sell fresh tomatoes throughout the summer and the fall, and still have plenty to make her spaghetti sauce.

The plants looked healthy and well taken care of, but there was no Betsy.

“Her truck’s here,” I said. “Let’s check the back door.”

We stepped through another screen door. But this screen was part of an entire set of screens around a back porch. This porch wasn’t about paperbacks or iced tea, but where Betsy kept her gardening supplies, including a number of pairs of both boots and gloves—there were muddy sets of each on the floor of the porch. I crouched and touched the mud on the gloves closest to the house door, confirming that it was still wet.

Just as I started to stand again to knock on the door, it swung open, missing my head by a close inch.

“Becca! What in the world?” Betsy said as she stood in the doorway.

“Hi, Betsy,” I said. “Harry and I just came out to see how you were doing.”

Betsy didn’t look happy to see either of us. I was frequently struck by her natural beauty, her peaches and cream complexion. Her clear blue eyes might never have seen a touch of makeup and were lined with the kind of thick brown lashes that made even nonvain women a little jealous. Today, she had her long straight hair held back by a tie-dyed bandanna, and even though her expression was irritated, her face was appealing.

“Who are you?” she said to Harry.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “This is my friend Harry. I met him when I was in Arizona. He’s . . . visiting.”

Harry took off his cowboy hat. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Betsy said abruptly. “Excuse me.” She stepped out of the doorway and around me and Harry. She grabbed a woven big-brimmed hat that had been hanging
on a hook by the outer door and put it on her head. “I have some work to do. What can I do for the two of you?” She left the screened patio before we could answer.

“Can I just ask her some questions?” I said quietly to Harry.

“Of course. She’ll respond better to you than to me.”

We followed Betsy out to her tomatoes, about halfway down a row, where she crouched to her knees. She plucked ripe and ready tomatoes off one of the plants and placed them gently into a basket. Even with the big brim of the hat hiding her face, I could see the impatience with each quick pluck. I’d never seen such a thing before. Betsy wasn’t always cheery, but mostly she was serene and even-tempered. I was suddenly concerned about her.

“Betsy,” I said as we stopped next to her, both Harry and I careful not to step on any of her plants, “what in the world is going on? What happened to make you leave Bailey’s? Did we do something wrong? Are you going to the Smithfield market?”

It was miserably hot. I was covered in a thin layer of summer perspiration, and I was sure that Harry was trying to understand and fight the maniacal mix of humidity and heat but he wasn’t complaining. Betsy, in her Betsy-way, didn’t look bothered by the heat, though she was bothered by something.

“My exit from Bailey’s?” she said as she plucked a tomato from the vine so forcefully that the entire plant came out of the ground. She looked at the exposed roots and I thought she might cry.

“Yes, I suppose that’s a good place to start,” I said.

Betsy separated the tomato from the vine and placed it in the basket. She sighed as she put her gloved hands on her knees. “I’m sorry about that. I will apologize to Allison. I know I handled it extremely poorly, but I had to get out of there. I was angry. I’m also not legally supposed to sell tomatoes in this county at this point, I don’t think, and I didn’t want Bailey’s to get in any trouble because of me.”

“I don’t understand. What were you angry about?” I thought briefly about telling her about her license’s “pending” status, but it wasn’t my place and seemed like the least of whatever battles she was fighting.

“It’s private, Becca. But it has to do with the man who works at the county license office. I . . . I know him on a personal level and I felt—no, I feel—like he’s taking a personal situation that’s uncomfortable and attempting to harm my business, or prevent me from doing business.”

A bunch of somewhat connected thoughts ran through my mind. I didn’t know anything about Betsy’s personal life, the romantic parts included. I didn’t know Mr. Ship at all. I tried to imagine the two of them together and the picture wouldn’t form all the way. Betsy was significantly younger than Mr. Ship had been, but I should know better than to judge relationship age differences.

I also thought she’d missed the bad news.

“Oh,” I said. I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry but I wonder if you know the latest development.”

She looked up at me, her eyes wide in what seemed like genuine question under the brim of the hat.

I looked at Harry. Not long ago I made a conscious wish that I would never again have to be the messenger of news
that included murder. I’d made that wish about the same time I wished that I’d never find a dead body, ever again. But the moment had arrived when it would have been cowardly not to tell Betsy myself. Harry knew that, too. He nodded me on.

“Betsy,” I said as I crouched and put my hands over hers. “Mr. Ship is dead. He was killed yesterday morning.”

I looked at her closely. I wanted to watch every second of her reaction so that I could tell Sam what I saw. I wasn’t an expert, but it sure seemed like the shock and disbelief on her face were not part of an act.

“Becca, are you sure?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “I’m sorry if you and he were friends.”

She blinked and then her eyes moved to the ground as if she needed something bland to look at for a second. A moment later she looked up at me and said, “We weren’t friends. He was my uncle. My father’s brother.”

It was that moment that I remembered that Betsy’s mother had died a few months earlier. She’d gone suddenly from a heart attack, and Betsy had been devastated. That was the first I’d ever heard about her family, and I was embarrassed that I hadn’t remembered earlier. I knew nothing about her father.

“You said he was killed,” she said. “Do you mean murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, no, that’s terrible. Really terrible. I need to talk to my dad, Becca. I’ve been in Smithfield, I’ve been ignoring the phone, but I bet they’ve tried to call me. I need to go.”
She stood and stepped around both me and Harry as she hurried back to the house. As her legs moved quickly, she shed the gloves and the hat, dropping them on tomato plants. I thought she wasn’t even aware of what she was doing.

“That seemed like real surprise. I don’t think she killed him,” I said.

“Hmm,” Harry said noncommittally.

If it had been Sam instead of Harry, he probably would have reminded me that the evidence was the only thing that was important at this point. Harry didn’t know me well enough to school me in police procedure.

“Should we just go?” I said.

“Probably,” Harry said. He stepped carefully between the rows of tomato plants and then stopped when he reached one of Betsy’s gloves. “I think you should accidentally take one of those gloves.”

“What?” I said as I looked toward the house.

“I do. I think you should.”

“That sounds like theft.”

Harry shrugged. “I think you should accidentally take it. You can bring it back at some point. Despite what you might have heard in movies, getting fingerprints from the insides of gloves is a tricky business, but it’s possible. Sam might need it. If you happen to have it—by accident—well, it might help.”

“But I don’t think Betsy’s guilty of anything and I think she has an alibi from what Sam said.” I was still watching the back of the house.

“Suit yourself.” Harry took off again, he and his cowboy hat trudging toward the side of the house. A man I knew,
but maybe didn’t know at all. Someone from Arizona; a stranger and a friend all in one.

I hesitated but only for a second or two before I picked up a glove and put it in my pocket. I felt terrible and hoped that Betsy hadn’t seen what I done.

Truth be told, though, the entire petty larceny thing was also a little
thrilling.