“We want you to go to the lavender festival,” Vanessa announced before taking a sip of her coffee.
“You and Fairmont,” Georgie clarified.
Fairmont’s brown head popped up off the floor at the sound of his name, an inquisitive expression on his canine face. He’d curled up on his bed in the corner of the kitchen once my visitors had all seated themselves around my breakfast table.
“It’ll be fun, Zella,” Helen said. “Excellent exercise. Lots of walking. And if you go in the morning at nine when it starts, it won’t even be too hot to take Fairmont.”
I eyed the three silver-haired ladies. They’d descended upon me mid-morning, without any warning.
Ostensibly for coffee and a chat, but now I knew their real goal: to pitch an outing to the lavender festival. The same festival Helen knew I was already planning to attend tomorrow afternoon with my boyfriend, Luke.
But there was no mention of Sage County’s sheriff accompanying me in the morning, just Fairmont.
Leave the sheriff at home and bring the former cadaver dog. That wasn’t at all suspicious.
I allowed myself an internal eye roll. The ladies were up to something.
For a split second, I considered dismissing my suspicions. This was the Sage County Lavender Festival. Was there anything more innocuous than an event that celebrated a flower known for its calming effects?
But that was the old me thinking those thoughts. I’d learned in the last year that trouble could be found anywhere, even at a flower festival.
“What’s going on?” I directed my question to Helen. She was the most likely instigator in the group.
Vanessa and Georgie were always up for an adventure, especially if there was a puzzle to be solved or activities they could deem as research for the mysteries they wrote, but Helen actively sought out intrigue and excitement.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Then she grinned. “You should support the event. There are lots of booths promoting local goods, and there’s live music.”
“Exactly,” Vanessa agreed. “You can listen to a local band while eating White Sage brats and drinking lavender lemonade.”
“And then buy lavender soap,” Georgie added. “And lavender sugar scrub and lavender lotion.” She exhaled dreamily. “I do love lavender.”
All of the reasons they’d cumulatively listed were exactly why Luke and I had planned a date at the festival for tomorrow afternoon. Which was precisely what I told them.
Helen frowned. “But he doesn’t get off work until after two. It’ll be too hot to bring Fairmont. You should go in the morning.”
She wasn’t wrong. We weren’t having especially warm weather, but early June in Texas tended to hit at least in the nineties in the afternoon. We’d been lucky that the weather predictions for this weekend weren’t topping ninety-three degrees.
But then I caught sight of Georgie’s expression. She looked ready to burst. She was sitting on the edge of her seat with her lips pressed together. Combined with her silvery-white short curls and pastel pink streaks in her hair, she looked like an overeager pixie.
I smiled at her and waited.
Finally, unable to refrain, she said, “You can’t miss the jam judging.”
Vanessa elbowed her. Hard. If there’d been any doubt as to whether I was expected to observe or to judge, Vanessa’s reaction clarified the matter.
“I didn’t sign up to judge jam.” I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Definitely not. That sounded terribly political. Or at least delicate.
I didn’t need to anger half the jam makers in White Sage, Texas, when I didn’t place their entry. Already I had a reputation as a meddler. Not exactly the image I would have chosen when I moved here. Involving myself in fraught activities, such as jam judging, wouldn’t be an improvement.
“Maybe you forgot?” Helen offered that suggestion without the faintest hope I would believe her. I could see it on her face, the sneaky Svengali.
“I wouldn’t.” I tried to deliver a repressive look, but Helen was irrepressible.
Vanessa looked vaguely guilty.
Helen just smiled. “No, you wouldn’t, would you?”
At least now, we were getting to the root cause of this unplanned Friday morning meeting. I hadn’t even known the festival hosted a jam contest, but clearly, it was important to the three ladies sitting at my kitchen table.
“I’m judging this contest and making myself a target for Sage County jam makers…why?” I asked in a falsely pleasant manner.
Helen managed to suppress any signs of triumph—not that I’d agreed; I hadn’t yet—and answered the question in a fairly neutral tone. “You and Fairmont. We need a united front. There is shadiness, Zella, and we cannot tolerate that this year.”
“Shadiness? You mean that someone’s cheating.”
Georgie nodded enthusiastically.
Vanessa was more circumspect. “We suspect that someone is cheating. Mariah Weller, five-time Sage County Lavender Festival jam champion, to be specific.”
“Well, thank goodness for that. I was worried y’all wanted me to hunt down a missing person. The last one was dead, and I’ve had enough of corpses to last a lifetime.” More than any normal person, even one dating the county’s sheriff, should ever encounter.
“This is serious business. Literally.” Helen tapped her finger on the table for emphasis. “The winner of the competition this year will have their jam featured by an Austin jam and jelly company.”
I tipped my head. “You mean they’ll receive a licensing deal?”
“Exactly that. The winner of the competition gets a one-year contract and a ten grand signing bonus.”
Ten thousand dollars wasn’t life-altering to any of the four of us sitting at this table. Helen had come to White Sage after she and her now-deceased husband had accrued a tidy retirement. Sisters-in-law Vanessa and Georgie had been in dire financial straits, but their co-written mystery novels had taken off and provided them with the difference between a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and the comfort of a fat savings account. And I had both divorced well and had family money.
We were not the norm in Sage County.
So many of the people I’d met here worked multiple jobs. Earning a living in a small town seemed to require some degree of entrepreneurial skill or a work ethic that put most city folk to shame.
Life was not laid back and lazy in the country. Slower-paced, yes, but not lacking in old-fashioned hard work.
I leaned back in my chair and assessed the ladies at the table. “You have a better candidate in mind?”
“Well, yes,” Helen admitted. “But whether our pick wins or not, we don’t think Mariah should. Not with her raspberry lavender entry.”
The nose wrinkle that accompanied her statement made it clear what she thought of Mariah’s jam.
“Raspberry lavender?” I couldn’t help commenting because that wasn’t a variety of jam I’d ever heard of, let alone tasted.
“Each of the entries has to use lavender,” Vanessa explained. “I’m partial to Betsy’s lemon lavender, personally.”
“Oh, yes,” Georgie agreed. “So good. Though I think we can all agree that the cherry lavender entry is the best.”
Vanessa and Helen murmured their agreement.
“And just who is the creator of this spectacular cherry lavender jam?” Someone they all liked, or they wouldn’t be up in arms about their favorite jam maker missing out on a business opportunity.
Helen grinned, then announced cheerily, “Sally.”
I swallowed a sigh. It couldn’t be someone I didn’t know. Someone for whom my intervention would appear unbiased. Of course not. It had to be my boyfriend’s sister and owner of the best sandwich shop in the county.
But to be fair, in White Sage, everyone was related to everyone else, and if they weren’t, then they definitely knew them. There was no six degrees of separation here. Even for newcomers like me, the best I could hope for would be maybe three degrees.
So I was likely as unbiased a judge as the contestants could hope for, other than a complete hermit.
“How did I not know that Sally makes jam?” The woman owned a sandwich shop. Putting a peanut butter and jam sandwich on the menu and selling the jam on the side seemed like exactly something she would do. Sally had hustle to spare.
“You’re new,” Georgie replied, as if that explained everything.
“What Georgie means to say,” Vanessa clarified, “is that Sally only makes her jam seasonally and in small batches, and this is your first cherry season since you moved here. Cherries come into season here in June, so she has just enough time to make her jam for the competition. She’s entered the last few years and hasn’t ever made it to the finals, which is a crime.”
I’d already learned that lavender season began in May and ended in July. I didn’t actually know we had local cherries.
As for Sally’s jam not making the finals… A crime? No. Surprising? Very. Sally did everything that she attempted well. That woman made over-achievers look like slackers.
“We’d like her to carry it in the sandwich shop year-round,” Helen added. “But at least if she wins the competition, then we can buy the commercial version.”
Georgie nodded eagerly. “Hill Country Jams make good jelly and jam. It won’t be Sally’s, but with her recipe, it’ll be good.”
“And she’ll get the ten grand,” Vanessa said. “With Annie going off to college, that would be a nice bit of help.”
And that made it even worse, because, of course I wanted Annie to have help with her college fund. Annie was an amazing kid who worked hard and made better decisions than I ever had at her age.
I groaned, mostly because I was more than halfway there. “Please tell me that you have more evidence than Mariah’s jam isn’t all that great. Tastes do vary.”
“Exactly!” Helen’s over-enthusiastic exclamation put me immediately on guard. “That’s why we volunteered you to be on the panel of judges. We need to ensure Sally’s jam gets past the initial screening stage. The company rep makes the final decision, but in order to make it to the finals, there are two tiers of judging done by volunteer judges. You’re there to make sure there’s no sabotage.”
At least the volunteer judges weren’t directly determining the winner of the ten-thousand-dollar contract. That was a relief.
An emotion that triggered warning bells rang. I really was considering doing this, wasn’t I?
“And Fairmont’s part? Since you’re convinced he needs to accompany me.” I felt his head rest on my toes.
At some point in this ridiculous conversation, he’d made his way to my side and laid down next to my chair. Repeated use of his name had lured him away from his dog bed in the corner of the kitchen.
“Fairmont is a highly visible deterrent. Who wants to cheat in front of the dog that’s sniffed out death, crime, and bad guys all across Sage County?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Her answer was so far removed from the initial scenario I’d envisioned—a missing person turned dead body found stashed under the musicians’ stage, for example—that laughter was the only answer.
“So, to recap.” I ticked off my assignment parameters. “You want me to attend the festival tomorrow morning, bring Fairmont and let him sniff around the jam judging tent while looking official and important, then taste several different locally made jams that are seemingly anonymous, and ensure that the not-at-all anonymous cherry lavender entry makes it to the next round.”
Georgie gasped her dismay.
Helen and Vanessa looked less concerned, but they both frowned at me.
“What?” Because that was exactly what they’d asked me to do.
“You’re a judge, Zella,” Georgie replied in a scandalized tone. “You have to be impartial. You have to pick the best jams, whatever variety they are, whoever has made them.”
I nodded as if agreeing, then added, “Which will definitely include Sally’s.”
When they agreed this to be true, I swallowed my initial response: laughter.
Just barely, because they were being ridiculous.
How was I supposed to be impartial when they’d just spilled all the tea on the contestants and the entries?
But then I considered my assignment and its lack of illegal activity. Finally, a Sleuthing Granny Gang project that didn’t involve me breaking the law or hitting up Luke for insider information, or even hiding my borderline illegal activities from him. Because I wasn’t being asked to do anything illegal…just immoral and unethical. Sort of.
I almost said, “What could go wrong?”
Past experience had taught me the answer to that question was a surprisingly large number of very bad things. So I refrained from voicing that particular thought. No need to tempt fate.
I’d simply pop over to the festival, have a look around, get in a nice morning walk with Fairmont, and eat some delicious jam.
That sounded…maybe…fun?
“I’m in,” I finally said. The warm weight of Fairmont’s head on my toes reminded me that I’d even have company on my assignment. “We’re in.”
The ladies replied with cheers.
They were much too excited about this project.
Again with the warning bells—but I’d already said yes, so I resigned myself to becoming entangled in the potentially underhanded machinations of the Sage County jam-making population.