“I can’t wait. That sounds absolutely delicious. Do you have a farmer nearby who delivers vegetables?” I asked.
“No, ma’am. Way out back is our kitchen garden. It’s been there for years. When Mr. Willis bought this place, he liked the idea of ‘eating off the land,’ as he called it, so he allowed me to cultivate and harvest. Asparagus is in season right now.”
“I’m about to spend half an hour or so familiarizing myself with our gorgeous surroundings. Perhaps I will take a look at the garden. I promise not to disturb anything.”
“Nothing there to disturb. If you go out the back door, pass by the putting green, and follow the path through the pine trees, you’ll find the kitchen garden right in front of you.”
The back door led to a small wooden porch with a cozy sitting area. I could picture relaxing at the picnic table and shucking corn or shelling peas under a cloudless sky.
I did some light stretching and then started off. As I turned the corner of the house, I came to a full stop. Both Clancy and Lucinda had mentioned a putting green, but this one would have fit right in at the Augusta National Golf Club. The green itself was manicured to perfection and must have been at least two thousand square feet, with three distinct holes marked by pristine white flags flying in the breeze. A sand trap was off to the left, and directly in front of me was a water hazard.
I couldn’t imagine frustrated golfer Seth Hazlitt’s reaction to a putting green like this. I took out my phone and snapped a few pictures so I could text them and get Seth in a tizzy.
I jogged through the pine trees, and came to the kitchen garden in a couple of minutes. It was much closer to the house than I’d expected. The tomato plants were staked alongside a row of carrots—always a good combination. A small, neatly labeled herb garden was set off to one side and surrounded by the same white river rocks that edged the sitting garden. Every planted area was meticulously weeded.
As I bent down to read some of the herb labels, I heard a rustling sound near the edge of the pinewood. I turned to see a woman pushing branches out of her path as she ran away. I pulled out my phone and snapped two blurry pictures, but even as I did I realized that such a tall woman could only have been Marjory Ribault. But why would she have been skulking around the kitchen garden? I began to jog along the path she had taken. Perhaps this was one mystery I could solve.
Chapter Twelve
I reached a clearing in the trees and found Marjory Ribault sitting on a garden swing in front of a quaint cottage. She had a red bowl in her lap. When she saw me she stooped and pushed the bowl under the swing, but not before I noticed the asparagus tips peeking over the top.
“What brings you to the poor side of town?” Marjory asked. Although she tried to sound as if she was joking, there was a tinge of irony in her voice.
“Oh, I was out for a jog, following this path and that. The path behind the kitchen garden led me here.”
When I said the words “kitchen garden” a guilty look flashed across Marjory’s face but was instantly replaced by an expression of indifference. Could she possibly have been afraid I would cause trouble for her over a few asparagus spears?
I tried to help her relax by making a show of scrutinizing the cottage. “My, you have a lovely place here. So bucolic and peaceful.”
“This is all I have left since Willis Nickens blackmailed my father. Or I think ‘swindled’ is a better word. We used to have a grand driveway here, and this was the gateman’s house. Now Willis has forty-five acres and I have not quite two hundred square yards, with the house taking up most of it.”
“I imagine that must be challenging for you.” I glanced at the swing. “Perhaps we should sit for a while and you can tell me how it came to be.”
She wavered for a few seconds and then made a decision. “Actually I’d like that. It would be such a relief to talk to someone who doesn’t already have an opinion one way or another about Willis. Where are my manners? Please, come inside. I made some fresh lemonade this morning.”
For such a rustic cottage, the kitchen was extremely modern, even including an in-the-wall steam oven, similar to one I had recently seen at Charles Department Store. Jim Ranieri, who owns the store with his brother David, assured me steam ovens are the up-and-coming appliance guaranteed to make food healthier and tastier. At the time, I settled for a new microwave. Someday I would have to ask Marjory how she liked her steam oven, but this was not the day.
We sat at a round pedestal table covered by a white cloth with a decorative trim of bluebirds in flight. Marjory’s lemonade was delicious and I told her so.
“The secret is a light dusting of confectioners’ sugar on the lemon halves before I squeeze them in a good old-fashioned hand squeezer. Takes away a bit of the tartness but doesn’t make it sugary sweet like something out of a bottle.”
“I’ll have to remember to try that when I get back to Cabot Cove.”
She nodded. “And whatever you do, don’t use an electric juicer. Elbow grease does
