Deadly Row to Hoe by Cricket McRae Page B

life and relocated to Cadyville so they could be together, and he spent nearly every evening at our house like one of the family. Yet to the best of my knowledge he’d never spent the whole night.
    To the best of my knowledge. Just wait until I got Meghan alone.
    “Any more interviews today?” I asked Barr.
    He shook his head. “I’m going out to the farm first thing to talk to Nate.”
    “Fancy that. I was planning to head out there, too.”
    Meghan shot me a look.
    “To finish a job I started for Tom yesterday,” I said. “He wants the popcorn picked and stored so it can dry, and it’s supposed to rain tonight.”
    Everyone at the table looked skeptical. Too bad.
    Kelly looked at his watch and suddenly stood. “Oh! I’ve got to go. Gotta surveillance gig down in Seattle.”
    Meghan looked unhappy. He noticed and leaned down, wrapping his arm around her and kissing her on the neck. “Don’t worry. I’ll call you later.” And he was out the door.
    Meeting my housemate’s eyes, I gestured toward Barr with my chin. “Welcome to the wait-and-worry club. You just have to trust that they’ll be okay.”
    She pointed at me. “Thanks to you, I’ve been a member of that club for a long time.”
    Erin came in before I could respond. “Did I hear Kelly?”
    Barr pushed back from the table. “I’ll see you all later. Bye, hon.”
    “Bye,” I said, but I followed him out to the hallway. Meghan was on her own.

Fifteen
    I parked the Rover and got out. Though not yet eight o’clock, the sun had begun to warm the fields, and the air smelled of green leaves and rich earth. Barr hadn’t arrived yet, no doubt snagged by station business. Pulling on a pair of gloves, I made my leisurely way to the tool shed. It was unlocked as always, and the garden cart sat right where I’d left it the night before.
    I tugged it outside and down the path to the popcorn field. The thick rubber wheels bounced over rocks, making the removable slatted sides rattle in their moorings. The tower of compost rose in my peripheral vision to my left. I found myself veering toward it, cart still in tow. I stopped outside the police tape, one end of which now flapped lazily in the breeze.
    Unlike where I’d grown up in northern Colorado, August mornings and evenings in the Pacific Northwest were almost always crisp. Today was no exception, and the moist heat of decay wisped up from the pile. I could tell someone had given the whole thing a good toss since we’d discovered Darla. Was that a result of simple farm efficiency, or had the police been involved? It hadn’t occurred to me until now that there might be someone else in there, but the possibility had no doubt crossed Barr’s radar. I shuddered at the thought. In this case, no news was definitely good news.
    I closed my eyes and tried to picture what the pile had looked like before Meghan and I had started digging up Darla. Had there been any indication she’d been moved there? Drag marks? Wheel tracks? Foot prints? Why hadn’t I paid more attention?
    Oh. Right. Dead person. Very distracting. Still, I should have been more observant.
    Even if I couldn’t remember anything specific it didn’t mean Darla hadn’t been killed elsewhere and transported to the burial site. Between the digging and the emergency personnel, the area had been thoroughly messed up with footprints.
    Not to mention hoof and chicken prints.
    Several red hens pecked and scratched at the newly turned earth. Another reveled in a dust bath, fluffing her feathers and preening. Arnold Ziffel, the young pig Meghan had shooed away from her gruesome discovery two days earlier, came running up to me, grunting like, well, like a pig. He nosed me, begging for scritchin’s. I obliged with a good rub between his ears. He followed me back to the path, trotting behind the cart until I shut the gate to the fields and left him behind. A single pig could do serious damage to the limited crops if he got the chance.
    Wind sighed