I woke up Saturday morning thinking about the space I would be using at the Fall Festival at Adams Creek Farm. I hadn't paid it much attention before because I'd had Susan with me. Now, with her gone, I would need to familiarize myself with it more and while I was at it, maybe I could talk to Scott and Jenni. Ask them if they had seen anyone suspicious hanging around. Maybe they'd be able to shed light on who’d killed her.
We had left Bella and Topknot at home, thinking they would be too underfoot while trying to paint, and were getting ready to pull into the farm after stopping at Betty's for a latte and muffin. I needed my sustenance if I was going to paint.
"Do you want me to come with you?" Cooper asked.
"It's up to you. If you prefer to stay here and check email on your phone, I'll be fine on my own."
He gave me a grin. "How did you know that's what I was going to do?"
"I know that as hard as you’ve been working lately, taking this weekend off is probably just as hard, so if you need to check email, that's fine."
"Thanks, babe," he said, leaning over and kissing me on the cheek.
I grabbed my latte and slid out of Cooper's truck. "It shouldn't take long," I said before I shut the door.
I walked toward the barn first, though I doubted anyone would be there. I didn't think there was an activity going on in the barn event space this weekend if I remembered right from the event flyer that we had posted in Petal Pushers. Hopefully, the door would be open.
I reached the side door and turned the knob. It was open and I walked in. The last two times I had been here, tables hadn’t been set up, but now they were. With all the tables set up, the contest felt real, and I felt nerves wash over me for a second. There was going to be a lot of competition at the Fall Harvest Festival, and not for the first time I wondered if I was going to even be able to make the top ten by myself. But there was no point in worrying about that now. I would just need to do my best. It wasn't my fault Susan wasn't around to help. I walked over to the far-right side where our table was located. Susan said they had been in the same spot for the last couple years, and she had requested it again this year. She claimed it was the best spot, saying something about being farther away from the snack bar area, though I wasn't really sure what that had to do with anything.
I walked over to where our table was and found the index card with our names taped to the table. I could envision Susan's arrangements and I had to admit they seemed like winners to me. If only I could execute them. Though with Wendy and Cynthia's help, and probably Katy's too, I knew we would be giving it our best effort.
"What are you doing here?" a voice said from behind me.
I jumped before spinning around. It was Jenni.
"I actually came to talk to Scott—and you—but I wanted to check out the event space again first. Is that okay?"
"That's fine. The back room was off limits for a while, but now the police are done doing whatever it was that they were doing. I just ask that you don't move any of the table names around."
"What?"
Jenni pointed to the index cards that were taped to each table with the name of the contest entrants on it.
"I know what you meant, but you’ve got to be kidding me. People would actually come in here and try to move around table placements?"
"You would be surprised at how competitive this thing is. We assign tables based on first come first served, and those who have been in the contest before can have their same table if they so choose. Then after that, we just assign randomly."
I shook my head. "My mom has entered this contest for years and I never realized this was so cutthroat."
"Shouldn't Susan's death have clued you in about how serious people take these things?" Jenni said.
"You think Susan was killed to get her out of the contest?" I knew it was a possibility, but to hear Jenni say it filled me with dread. If my mom had been here to participate this year, could she have been a target? Could I be a target? The thought made me shiver.
"What else could it be? She seemed like a sweet lady, even if she was a little annoying and irritating when it came to her flowers, but why else would someone want her dead?"
The gossip over her life insurance and Susan reporting a couple parents to CPS had clearly not made the rounds out this far.
"Who do you think out of the entrants in this flower contest would want to win so badly that they would kill Susan over it?"
Jenni shrugged. "I don't know. I know I was sick and tired of losing to her."
That took me aback. "I didn't know you entered the flower contest."
"I have for the last five years, and have come in third each time."
"So, this thing has really been locked up for years. Susan and my mom have been winning, Mabel Winters has been coming in second, and you in third. What about fourth place? Has that been constant?"
"No. The rest of the places are kind of anyone's guess each year."
I heard a screech come from the walkie-talkie hanging on Jenni's belt.
"This is Jenni," she said, unclipping it and talking into the speaker.
"We need you at the Caramel Apple Café. The taffy machine broke down again," a voice I didn't recognize came across the speaker.
"I'll be right there." Jenni turned her attention back to me. "I need to take care of this. Like I said, feel free to look around, do whatever, just don't move things around."
"Thanks, Jenni," I said, and she walked out.
I decided to walk into the back and take a look at the coolers myself. As I walked through the door to the back area, I called out to see if anyone else was there. It didn't escape me that Susan probably thought she was here alone and then got locked into a cooler somehow, so when I walked over to the row of coolers, I looked around first before walking to the one where Susan had been found to examine it more closely.
The temperature was reading 33°F. I opened the door, felt the blast of cool air, and looked where the safety handle was. It was all shiny and new. You could tell it had been recently replaced, as it wasn't worn out and dingy like the rest of the cooler. Who could have gone to such great lengths to sabotage a cooler on the off-chance Susan would check it out?
"Jenni said you were down here," I heard Scott say from behind me.
I flinched, my heart starting to race. I had thought I was so vigilant, and then hadn't heard him come up behind me.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's fine," I said, shutting the door and turning around to face him. "I just didn't expect anyone to be down here."
"Is that why you are down here, snooping?"
I looked at Scott tilting my head. If I didn't know better, he seemed annoyed. "Jenni said it was fine. I just wanted to get the lay of the land again, since I'm doing this without Susan."
"You should probably be going now. I need to lock things up. We wouldn't want any more accidents happening before the big day."
I nodded, although I found his comment odd, and headed back out the front door and out to the truck where Cooper was waiting.
"Did you get the information you needed?" he said.
I slid in. "Yeah, I did." Now I knew that this competition was so fierce someone might really help off Susan to get ahead, except then they would also have to be confident they could beat Jenni and Mabel Winters. I also knew that Scott hadn’t liked that I was snooping around the back, which made no sense since I was in the competition. What was going on with Scott?
After a couple of hours of painting at the farmhouse my arm was getting tired, but I did enjoy seeing the drab walls change into blank canvases for whatever Cooper and I decided to put on them. Something about a fresh coat of paint that gave a house new life.
As I painted the walls I thought about Susan and who might have had access to the flower cooler in order to tamper with the safety latch. The most apparent suspects would be Jenni and Scott, but what motive could they have? They didn’t profit from Susan’s death, and this could actually hurt their business. Dale would come into life insurance money, but could he have gotten on the property and known where the coolers were to tamper with them? Same with Josie. She might want Susan dead to take her out of the running, but Josie wouldn’t have had easy access to the coolers either. Though she would have it easier than Dale, as the communication upon entry to the contest explained the availability of coolers and where they were located. Would Josie risk jail time just to eliminate a competitor?