Til Dirt Do Us Part (A Local Foods Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

have no idea where he would be or who he hangs out with.” Cam shook her head. “How did you find out about Irene’s death?”
    “My cousin’s a dispatcher. She knows Bobby and I are friends. She thought I might know where he is. The police are looking for him.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. To notify him, I guess.” Sim’s voice shook.
    “Sit down. I think you need a beer or something stronger. Yes?”
    Sim agreed and sat at the dining table. Cam poured them each a glass of ale from a half-full growler the brewery had given her last night. So what if it was only ten o’clock in the morning? It was five o’clock somewhere. Sim drained half her glass straight off. Cam refilled it and sat.
    “What were you saying about pigs, Sim?”
    Sim shuddered. Her face drew in like she’d seen a demon.
    “Tell me.” Cam covered Sim’s hand with her own.
    “The cops said Irene was found in a pigsty. Half the flesh was eaten off her legs by the pigs.” Sim laid her head on her arms on the table.
    Cam gasped. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the image was worse. And when she reopened them, Sim was still there. The nightmare was still there.
    “A pigsty?” Cam shuddered at the awful vision. A body, Irene Burr’s body, in a pigsty. On a pig farm.
    Sim nodded mutely.
    “How did she get into a pigsty?”
    “I don’t know. Somebody saw her Jag parked at the edge of the woods.”
    Cam’s eyes widened. “Wait. Whose farm?”
    “The Jag was next to a path that leads to the Fisher farm.”
    “Oh, no! But why didn’t she get out?” Cam stared at her, the realization sinking in. “This wasn’t an accident, was it? Did your cousin say—”
    “Not an accident. Irene was murdered.” Sim slammed her hand on the table, making the vase jump. An orange nasturtium slid away from its mates and lay beached on the old oak of the table. “Lots of people would have been much happier if Irene disappeared, me included. I wouldn’t kill her, but it doesn’t surprise me somebody did.”

Chapter 3
    S im drove off on her motorcycle after saying she had customers waiting at her shop. Cam trudged back to work, with the news weighing as heavily on her as a bushel of new potatoes. She stopped and leaned against the southern wall of the barn, its rough wood warmed by a sun finally shining through the morning gloom, wood Bobby had hammered into place all summer long.
    Poor Irene. Cam tried without success to banish the image of hungry, snuffling pigs chewing on Irene’s flesh. She fervently hoped Irene had been dead or at least unconscious before that happened. Who would have gone so far as killing Irene? And why on Howard’s farm?
    The thought that cheery, hardworking, flirty Bobby was missing, and did not know his stepmother was dead, also disturbed her deeply. She had to admit to herself what she hadn’t said to Sim: maybe he had argued with Irene and somehow had accidentally killed her. And then had left town. She shook her head. It would be the act of a guilty person, not a grieving innocent.
    Cam shook her head again. She had a farm to run. It was the police’s business to figure out what had happened, not hers. She grabbed a pitchfork from inside the barn and emptied the tomato vines from the cart into the bin holding the newest compost ingredients. She forked finished compost into the cart from the last bin in the row of four. The dark crumbly matter, more valuable to the soil than gold, was the result of mixing spent plants with fall leaves, horse manure from a neighboring farm, grass clippings, and kitchen waste. Cam turned the compost as often as she could. She sprinkled it with water as she worked and then let air, microorganisms, and worms do the rest of the work of breaking down the mix. She tried to find time, or sometimes a volunteer, to shift the working compost from bin to bin every week or two, which mixed and aerated it. By the time the compost hit the last bin, all the rough ingredients were combined, broken down,