Killer Jam (A Dewberry Farm Mystery) Read online

  Praise for Karen MacInerney

  “Karen MacInerney writes with verve and vitality, and her Natalie Barnes is a Maine original. I’m ready to book a room at the Gray Whale Inn!”

  – Susan Wittig Albert, bestselling author of Nightshade and other China Bayles Herbal Mysteries

  “Deliciously clever plot. Juicy characters. Karen MacInerney has cooked up a winning recipe for murder. Don’t miss this mystery!”

  – Maggie Sefton, author of Knit One, Kill Two

  “Murder on the Rocks has just what’s needed for a cozy evening in front of the fire with a good mystery book—a plucky innkeeper who’s come from off island and a determined developer who wants her land. Set on a rocky island off the coast of Maine, you can hear the foghorns, see the circling seagulls, smell the wild beach roses, taste the wicked blueberry coffee cake and the killer cranberry scones (the recipes follow the story), and feel the satisfying shivers when the first body appears.”

  – Cynthia Riggs, author of the Martha’s Vineyard mystery series

  “A savory blend of New England charm, delightfully eccentric characters, humor, and mouth-watering recipes . . . all served with a side of murder.”

  – Candy Calvert, author of Dressed to Keel

  “MacInerney’s charming sixth offers beautiful scenery, an assortment of appended recipes, and one of her strongest mysteries to date.”

  – Kirkus Reviews

  “Sure to please cozy readers.”

  – Library Journal

  “. . . a new cozy author worth investigating.”

  – Publishers Weekly

  “. . . this book is an absolute gem.”

  – Suspense Magazine

  “I kept reaching for the next page, and the next, and the next . . . ”

  – MaryJanice Davidson, New York Times bestselling author of the Undead series

  “If you are a fan of Kelley Armstrong, Cheyenne McCray, or Kim Harrison then you will definitely want to check out Karen MacInerney’s Howling at the Moon: Tales of an Urban Werewolf, it is to die for!”

  – Coffee Time Romance

  “Humorous and event-filled . . . a romantic triangle also adds spice and interest. Future adventures promise to be quite entertaining!”

  – Romantic Times

  “You’ll have the reading time of your life with talented author Karen MacInerney.”

  – ReaderToReader.com

  “A swift-paced, fun romp.”

  – Charlaine Harris, New York Times bestselling author

  “A laugh-out-loud, wacky and hysterical romp.”

  – Sue Ann Jaffarian, author of the Odelia Grey mysteries

  ALSO BY KAREN MACINERNEY

  The Gray Whale Inn Mysteries

  Murder on the Rocks

  Dead and Berried

  Murder Most Maine

  Berried to the Hilt

  Brush with Death

  Death Runs Adrift

  The Margie Peterson Mysteries

  Mother’s Day Out

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Karen MacInerney

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com , Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503945463

  ISBN-10: 1503945464

  Illustrated by Julia Green

  Back cover design by Megan Haggerty

  For Maryann and Clovis Heimsath

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Grandma Vogel’s Cottage Cheese

  Fresh Strawberry Custard Pie

  Killer Dewberry Jam

  Quinn’s Famous Glazed Maple Twists

  Mason Jar Beeswax Candles

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I’ve always heard it’s no use crying over spilled milk. But after three days of attempting to milk Blossom the cow (formerly Heifer #82), only to have her deliver a well-timed kick that deposited the entire contents of my bucket on the stall floor, it was hard not to feel a few tears of frustration forming in the corners of my eyes.

  Stifling a sigh, I surveyed the giant puddle on the floor of the milking stall and reached for the hose. I’d tried surrounding the bucket with blocks, holding it in place with my feet—even tying the handle to the side of the stall with a length of twine. But for the sixth straight time, I had just squeezed the last drops from the teats when Blossom swung her right rear hoof in a kind of bovine hook kick, walloping the top of the bucket and sending gallons of the creamy white fluid spilling across both the concrete floor and my boots. I reprimanded her, but she simply tossed her head and grabbed another mouthful of the feed I affectionately called “cow chow.”

  She looked so unassuming. So velvety-nosed and kind, with big, long-lashed eyes. At least she had on the day I’d selected her from the line of cows for sale at the Double-Bar Ranch. Despite all the reading I’d done on selecting a heifer, when she pressed her soft nose up against my cheek, I knew she belonged at Dewberry Farm. Thankfully, the rancher I’d purchased her from had seemed more than happy to let her go, extolling her good nature and excellent production.

  He’d somehow failed to mention her phobia of filled buckets.

  Now, as I watched the tawny heifer gamboling into the pasture beside my farmhouse, kicking her heels up in what I imagined was a cow’s version of the middle finger, I took a deep breath and tried to be philosophical about the whole thing. She still had those big brown eyes, and it made me happy to think of her in my pasture rather than the cramped conditions at Double-Bar Ranch. And she’d only kicked the milk bucket, not me.

  Despite the farm’s growing pains, as I turned toward the farmhouse, I couldn’t help but smile. After fifteen years of life in Houston, I now lived in a century-old yellow farmhouse—the one I’d dreamed of owning my whole life—with ten acres of rolling pasture and field, a peach orchard, a patch of dewberries, and a quaint, bustling town just up the road. The mayor had even installed a Wi-Fi transmitter on the water tower, which meant I could someday put up a website for the farm. So what if Blossom was more trouble than I’d expected, I told myself. I’d only been a dairy farmer for seventy-two hours; how could I expect to know everything?

  In fact, it had only been six months since my college roommate, Natalie Barnes, had convinced me to buy the farm that had once belonged to my grandparents. Natalie had cashed in her chips a few years back and bought an inn in Maine, and I’d
never seen her happier. With my friend’s encouragement, I’d gone after the dream of reliving those childhood summers, which I’d spent fishing in the creek and learning to put up jam at my grandmother’s elbow.

  It had been a long time since those magical days in Grandma Vogel’s steamy, deliciously scented kitchen. I’d spent several years as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle, fantasizing about a simpler life as I wrote about big-city crime and corruption. As an antidote to the heartache I’d seen in my job, I’d grown tomatoes in a sunny patch of the backyard, made batches of soap on the kitchen stove, and even kept a couple of chickens until the neighbors complained.

  Ever since those long summer days, I’d always fantasized about living in Buttercup, but it wasn’t until two events happened almost simultaneously that my dream moved from fantasy to reality. First, the paper I worked for, which like most newspapers was suffering from the onset of the digital age, laid off half the staff, offering me a buyout that, combined with my savings and the equity on my small house, would give me a nice nest egg. And second, as I browsed the web one day, I discovered that my grandmother’s farm—which she’d sold fifteen years ago, after my grandfather passed—was up for sale.

  Ignoring my financial advisor’s advice—and fending off questions from friends who questioned my sanity—I raided the library for every homesteading book I could find, cobbled together a plan I hoped would keep me from starving, took the buyout from the paper, and put an offer in on Dewberry Farm. Within a month, I went from being Lucy Resnick, reporter, to Lucy Resnick, unemployed homesteader of my grandparents’ derelict farm. Now, after months of backbreaking work, I surveyed the rows of fresh green lettuce and broccoli plants sprouting up in the fields behind the house with a deep sense of satisfaction. I might not be rich, and I might not know how to milk a cow, but I was living the life I’d always wanted.

  I focused on the tasks for the day, mentally crossing cheese making off the list as I headed for the little yellow farmhouse. There might not be fresh mozzarella on the menu, but I did have two more batches of soap to make, along with shade cover to spread over the lettuce, cucumber seeds to plant, chickens to feed, and buckets of dewberries to pick and turn into jam. I also needed to stop by and pick up some beeswax from the Bees’ Knees, owned by local beekeeper Nancy Shaw. The little beeswax candles I made in short mason jars were a top seller at Buttercup Market Days, and I needed to make more.

  Fortunately, it was a gorgeous late spring day, with late bluebonnets carpeting the roadsides and larkspur blanketing the meadow beside the house, the tall flowers’ ruffled lavender and pink spikes bringing a smile to my face. They’d make beautiful bouquets for the market this coming weekend—and for the pitcher in the middle of my kitchen table. Although the yellow Victorian-style farmhouse had been neglected and left vacant for the past decade or more, many of my grandmother’s furnishings remained. She hadn’t been able to take them with her to the retirement home, and for some reason, nobody else had claimed or moved them out, so many things I remembered from my childhood were still there.

  The house had good bones, and with a bit of paint and elbow grease, I had quickly made it a comfortable home. The white tiled countertop sparkled again, and my grandmother’s pie safe with its punched tin panels was filled with jars of jam for the market. I smoothed my hand over the enormous pine table my grandmother had served Sunday dinners on for years. I’d had to work to refinish it, sanding it down before adding several layers of polyurethane to the weathered surface, but I felt connected to my grandmother every time I sat down to a meal.

  The outside had taken a bit more effort. Although the graceful oaks still sheltered the house, looking much like they had when I had visited as a child, the line of roses that lined the picket fence had suffered from neglect, and the irises were lost in a thicket of Johnson grass. The land itself had been in worse shape; the dewberries the farm had been named for had crept up into where the garden used to be, hiding in a sea of mesquite saplings and giant purple thistles. I had had to pay someone to plow a few acres for planting, and had lost some of the extra poundage I’d picked up at my desk job rooting out the rest. Although it was a continual battle against weeds, the greens I had put in that spring were looking lush and healthy—and the dewberries had been corralled to the banks of Dewberry Creek, which ran along the back side of the property. The peach trees in the small orchard had been cloaked in gorgeous pink blossoms and now were laden with tiny fruits. In a few short months, I’d be trying out the honey-peach preserves recipe I’d found in my grandmother’s handwritten cookbook, which was my most treasured possession. Sometimes, when I flipped through its yellowed pages, I almost felt as if my grandmother were standing next to me.

  Now, I stifled a sigh of frustration as I watched the heifer browse the pasture. With time, I was hoping to get a cheese concern going; right now, I only had Blossom, but hopefully she’d calve a heifer, and with luck, I’d have two or three milkers soon. Money was on the tight side, and I might have to consider driving to farmers’ markets in Austin to make ends meet—or maybe finding some kind of part-time job—but now that I’d found my way to Buttercup, I didn’t want to leave.

  I readjusted my ponytail—now that I didn’t need to dress for work, I usually pulled my long brown hair back in the mornings—and mentally reviewed my to-do list. Picking dewberries was next, a delightful change from the more mundane tasks of my city days. I needed a few more batches of jam for Buttercup’s Founders’ Day Festival and Jam-Off, which was coming up in a few days. I’d pick before it got too hot; it had been a few days since I’d been down by the creek, and I hoped to harvest another several quarts.

  Chuck, the small apricot rescue poodle who had been my constant companion for the past five years, joined me as I grabbed a pair of gardening gloves and the galvanized silver bucket I kept by the back door, then headed past the garden in the back and down to the creek, where the sweet smell of sycamores filled the air. I didn’t let Chuck near Blossom—I was afraid she would do the same thing to him that she did to the milk bucket—but he accompanied me almost everywhere else on the farm, prancing through the tall grass, guarding me from wayward squirrels and crickets, and—unfortunately—picking up hundreds of burrs. I’d had to shave him within a week of arriving at the farm, and I was still getting used to having a bald poodle. This morning, he romped through the tall grass, occasionally stopping to sniff a particularly compelling tuft of grass. His pink skin showed through his clipped fur, and I found myself wondering if there was such a thing as doggie sunscreen.

  The creek was running well this spring—we’d had plenty of rain, which was always welcome in Texas, and a giant bullfrog plopped into the water as I approached the mass of brambles with their dark, sweet berries. They were similar to the blackberries I bought in the store, but a bit longer, with a sweet-tart tang that I loved. I popped the first few in my mouth.

  I went to work filling the bucket, using a stick to push the brambles aside, and had filled it about halfway when I heard the grumble of a motor coming up the long driveway. Chuck, who had been trying to figure out how to get to the fish that were darting in the deeper part of the creek, turned and growled. I shushed him as we headed back toward the farmhouse, the bucket swinging at my side.

  A lanky man in jeans and a button-down shirt was unfolding himself from the front seat of the truck as I opened the back gate. Chuck surged ahead of me, barking and growling, then slinking to my ankle when I shushed him with a sharp word.

  “Can I help you?” I asked the man. He was in his midforties, with work-worn boots and the roughened skin of a man who’d spent most of his life outdoors.

  “You Lucy Resnick?” he asked.

  “I am,” I said, putting down the bucket. Chuck growled again and put himself between us.

  “Butch Simmons, Lone Star Exploration,” the man said, squinting at me.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, extending a hand. Chuck yipped, and I apologized.

  “Good dogg
ie,” the man said, reaching down to let the poodle sniff him. Usually, that was all the little dog needed to become comfortable, but something about the man upset him. He growled, backing away.

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” I said, scooping him up in my arms. “Can I help you with something?” I asked again, holding the squirming poodle tight.

  “Mind if I take a few pictures? We’re surveying the property before we start the exploration process.”

  “Exploration process?” I asked.

  “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  He turned his head and spit out a wad of snuff. I wrinkled my nose, revolted by the glob of brown goo on the caliche driveway. “We’re drillin’ for oil.”

  Drilling for oil?” I said. Chuck squirmed in my arms. “Here?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  I hugged Chuck tight to my chest. “You can’t do that! I bought this property!”

  “I understand that, ma’am, but you only bought the surface rights.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You own the dirt on top, not what’s underneath. The owner of the mineral rights thinks there might be something here, so they’ve hired me to check it out.”

  Despite the warm morning, I suddenly felt icy cold. “What if I refuse?”

  “I’m afraid that would be against the law.”

  Chuck gave a mighty squirm and leaped from my arms, hackles bristling, and began barking furiously. I grabbed his collar out of instinct as the man pulled out a camera and began taking pictures of my house.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Taking pictures of what it looks like now so we can restore it when the drilling’s over,” he said.

  My stomach did a slow flip-flop. “Restore it? What are you planning to do, exactly?”

  “Don’t know yet.” He spat out another wad of slimy snuff, and I recoiled. “Don’t you worry about it. We’ll put everything to rights.”

  A horrible image of an oil well smack dab in the middle of my broccoli patch materialized in my mind’s eye. I shook my head as if that could dislodge it. “Nobody’s doing anything without my permission,” I said. “Who owns these so-called mineral rights, anyway?”