ALSO BY AMANDA FLOWER

  FARM TO TABLE MYSTERIES

  Farm to Trouble

  Put Out to Pasture

  In Farm’s Way

  Copyright © 2024 by Amanda Flower

  Cover and internal design © 2024 by Sourcebooks

  Cover illustration by Marco Marella

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Epilogue

  Shioloh’s Quick Farm Tips

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For my nephew Sergio Flecha Flower

  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

  The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

  Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve;

  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

  Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on, and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep…

  William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  Chapter One

  If Penelope Lee Odders clicked her pen one more time, I might have jumped into the Grand Traverse Bay. Penny Lee, as she preferred to be called, was a woman about sixty years old who fancied herself a hard-hitting reporter covering the annual National Cherry Festival in Traverse City for a newsletter called the Sweet Cherry News.

  “Now,” Penny Lee said as she looked down at her notes and her gray curls fell over her eyes. “What happened in Los Angeles that made you want to come back to Michigan in the first place? Man trouble? Lawsuit? Tell us all.” She brushed her hair aside.

  I ground my teeth; Penny Lee had asked me the same question about my life in Hollywood a myriad of ways in the last hour. Maybe I was slow on the uptake, but it seemed to me that she was much more interested in my past than my present as owner and organic farmer at Bellamy Farm in Cherry Glen, a small town thirty minutes east of Traverse City.

  Penny and I sat on folding chairs on a dock overlooking the gorgeous blue of the bay. Against the dock, the bay began as sky blue and deepened into a vibrant navy blue as it emptied into the deep waters of Lake Michigan. The July morning sunlight, which beat down on our heads, reflected off on the water like crystals and shone on the countless sailboats that made their way out on the lake for the day. My little pug, Huckleberry, sat under my chair in the shade. Huckleberry had been born and raised in LA, and although we had lived in Michigan for just short of a year, he still looked continually confused about how he ended up in the middle of the north woods.

  The edge of the dock would have been the perfect spot to sit and reflect on the fact that I had made the right decision to leave my job as a television producer to move back home to save the family farm, but glancing at the woman with frizzy gray hair and pointy nose across from me, I had a brief moment of doubt.

  I stood up. “Penny Lee, I’m really grateful to you for this interview. The National Cherry Festival is the biggest event in Michigan, and I know that you must have so many people to talk to and so much to cover, so we should probably stop now as the festival opens”—I consulted my smartwatch—“oh, in ten minutes!” I squeaked. If I want to be at Bellamy Farm’s booth at opening time, I had to go now.

  Penny Lee stood up and smoothed the wrinkles in her prairie skirt. “I suppose you’re right. I’m sorry we had to end before we were able to get to the meat of the matter.”

  The meat of the matter? What on earth was she talking about? When I agreed to this interview, it was to talk about my farm, our cherries, and the organic baked goods and products that I sold. After many months, the farm was no longer just getting by but making a modest profit as a working farm.

  “Thank you for your time,” I said. I couldn’t believe that I was thanking her, but good manners were so ingrained in me by my grandma Bellamy, it was impossible to not say thank you even in the most uncomfortable situations. Tugging lightly on Huckleberry’s leash, I stepped around her to walk up the dock.

  “One last question,” she called to me.

  I closed my eyes for a second and, against my better judgment, said, “Yes, what is it?”

  “How long have you and your cousin Stacey Bellamy been fighting over your late grandmother’s money?”

  “No comment.” I stomped away, and my little pug galloped after me to keep up.

  I was fuming as I hurried through the festival to reach the Cherry Farm Market, where Bellamy Farm had a booth for the very first time in its over seventy-year history. As a Michigan cherry grower, to have a booth at the Cherry Farm Market at the National Cherry Festival was a major feather in our cap. It was something that we could use to promote the farm on social media and in advertisements. To be at the market, your cherries have to meet the highest level of excellence, and my farm director, Chesney Stevens, and I worked tirelessly to bring the farm’s half-dead orchard back to life.

  Even though we were accepted into the festival by the slimmest possible margin, I knew that each year the farm would improve dramatically, and in a few years, I could see Bellamy Farm being one of the most popular organic cherry booths at the Cherry Farm Market. Or at least that was the dream.

  As Huckleberry and I walked through Open Space Park, where the majority of the festival was held on the edge of the Grand Traverse Bay, I glanced at the smaller of the two stages on the lookout for my cousin. She had been avoiding me in town, but I hoped that during the festival, we would have a chance to talk about what to do with our grandmother’s stocks. I had to make Stacey understand that I didn’t want to keep the money from her. However, for her to receive any money at all, she had to give her consent to the distribution of the inheritance as a legal heir. Just thinking about it gave me a headache. The argument had been going on for months.

  There was no sign of Stacey on the stage as I walked by, but I saw Whit Stevens, Chesney’s younger sister, next to a silver and red university trailer parked to the right of the stage. From what Whit had said, the trailer was used a green room of sorts when actors were between scenes.

  Whit was dressed all in black and had a headset around her neck that was almost hidden by her streaked, bumblebee-bright yellow and black hair. Whit was a college student and worked as the stage manager at the Michigan Street Theater. It was no surprise to me that she had this job at such a young age. She was just as hardworking as her older sister.

  Whit folded her arms across her chest as she spoke to a young man about her age. He had longish brown hair that he continually flipped out of his face with a flick of his head. Whatever he was saying to Whit, she didn’t appear too happy about it. My curiosity was piqued, but I knew it was none of my business, nor did I have the time to snoop.

  A man bellowed at me, shaking me from my thoughts. “Out of the way!”

  I glanced over my shoulder to see a short plump man carrying a giant cherry-headed mannequin on his shoulder. The man’s face was as red as the cherry man he carried. I scooted to the side of the park trail, scooping up my ever-faithful pug, Huckleberry, in the process.

  The two of us stood there for a long moment watching the bobbing cherry head disappear in the sea of cherry red around us. The color literally was everywhere.

  The festival was spread across the entire downtown area, with the carnival rides along East Grandview Parkway, th
e large music performances at the Bayside Music Stage, and the small acts, the Shakespeare performance, and Cherry Farm Market in Open Space Park.

  There were so many things going on that I didn’t even notice twelve-year-old Hazel Killian running toward me until she called my name. Her long ponytail flew behind her head like a flag, and her knobby knees moved like pistons on a locomotive. “Shiloh! Shiloh!”

  I waved at her.

  She pulled up short when she reached Huckleberry and me. She bent over and gulped for air like she had just finished a marathon.

  I rubbed her hand. “Hazel, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Are you breathing?”

  She was still bent over and held one finger in the air in the universal sign for hold on. I waited for her to collect herself.

  She stood up straight. “Where have you been? Chesney is freaking out. The festival is about to open, but you’re not at the booth.”

  I studied her face, looking for the truth in her statement. It wasn’t that I thought she was lying, but she did have a tendency to exaggerate. I highly doubted that Chesney Stevens freaked out about anything. My young farm director was just about the coolest customer there was, and there wasn’t anything at the booth that she needed me for. She could do everything I could and twice as well.

  Not wanting to make a big issue out of it, especially after my less than pleasant conversation with Penny Lee, I said, “I’m heading that way now.”

  She tugged my arm. “You have to hurry.”

  I brushed my blond curls out of my face in time to see another man carrying a second mannequin with a giant cartoon cherry head on the top of it, coming straight for us.

  I grabbed Hazel by the arm and pulled her out of the way. She cleared the cherry head just in time.

  Hazel pulled herself out of my grasp. “You nearly took my arm off.”

  I shaded my eyes from the sun. “Sorry. That giant cherry looked dangerous. I don’t want to have to tell your father that you got run over by a giant fiberglass cherry.” I stepped back on the path but continued to carry Huckleberry rather than walk him on his leash. There just were too many obstacles between where we were and the booth.

  “Dad would know it wasn’t your fault,” she said cheerfully as she walked beside me. “He’s always reminding me to watch where I’m going. He says I need to pay more attention and put my head on a swivel, whatever that means.”

  “I don’t think your grandmother would feel the same way,” I said. “She’d definitely blame me.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. She really doesn’t like you,” she said with a shrug.

  That was an understatement. Hazel’s grandmother, Doreen Killian, had no love lost for me, and I didn’t see that changing any time soon.

  Hazel looked around. “Besides, if someone was going to kick the bucket here, I think it would be a cherry-related death for sure. Look at this place. All you see are cherries!”

  She was right; there were cherries everywhere. This was the first time I had been to the festival in sixteen years, and the very first time as a farmer representing my family farm. It was a major honor to be selected for the market. There was a strenuous application process and a hefty application fee to boot—a fee that was forfeited if you weren’t selected. Even though my family had been growing high-quality cherries on our farm for generations, my father never wanted to take the risk of the entry fee. He said it was like gambling and he wasn’t a gambler. He was a collector, a collector of obscure Michigan historical artifacts, and he had an entire room in his farmhouse to prove it.

  Now that I was making decisions for the farm and my father had more or less retired, I was willing to take risks, so I applied this year.

  I was so happy that I did, because Bellamy Farm was chosen to participate, and since Traverse City was a mere thirty minutes from my farm, I would be able to care for the farm and run the booth at the same time. Most of the cherry growers came from farther away and didn’t have that good fortune.

  The moment I saw the competition, I realized the little makeshift booth I always used at the much smaller Cherry Glen Farmers Market wasn’t going to cut it here at the big show. No folding tables and beach umbrellas here, that’s for sure.

  I spent a considerable amount of money to have a custom booth made at breakneck speed by a local carpenter, and then Chesney did all the trim work and painting. I was happy with the result. The booth was shaped like a giant berry basket overflowing with cherries. A beach ball-size cherry hung from a limb made of green spray-painted PVC pipe. The carpenter made the basket, but Chesney came up with clever ways to make the paper-mache cherries as well as stems and leaves. There really was nothing she couldn’t do.

  The gamble on the booth put me that much deeper in debt; debt I would have no trouble paying off if my cousin Stacey would just listen to reason.

  At the booth, Chesney set three jars of cherry jam into a paper sack and handed it to a customer. “Enjoy the festival! And remember to tell your friends to come to the Bellamy Farm cherry basket. It’s the only place that you can buy organic cherry blossom honey, maple syrup, cherry preserves, and baked goods at the festival. It’s a one-stop shop that is not to be missed.”

  The woman smiled in return. “I will, and thank you for selling these to me before you officially opened. There is so much to see, and I only have a couple of free hours to do it. Also, I have to say that your booth is just delightful. I came over to see what you had just to take a better look at it. It’s my favorite booth at the market. You should be proud.”

  Chesney beamed. “We are more than proud, and thank you kindly!”

  The woman left, and Chesney grinned at me from ear to ear. “Shi, did you hear that? The booth worked. I told you that it was an excellent idea. It’s going to pay for itself!”

  Hazel slid behind the booth. She and her father, Quinn, were two of my closest neighbors. They had a small nonworking farm about a half mile from me. Quinn was a single dad and a fireman and EMT for the town of Cherry Glenn and worked twenty-four-hour shifts. When he was working, Hazel either spent the time with her grandparents, Chief Randy and Doreen Killian, or me. Hazel loved her grandparents, but they were much stricter than I was, so she always preferred my place over their house in town.

  That was fine with me because Hazel was actually doing farm chores, which is how I spent the majority of my days. Having her along made the long days much more fun too.

  “How did the interview go?” Chesney asked.

  I made a face.

  “Bad publicity is better than no publicity,” she said in her cheerful way.

  “I don’t know about that.” I sighed. “Penny Lee really just wants to know about my past in LA, not the farm.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Why?”

  “No idea,” I said. “And I don’t plan to find out because I am going to do my best to hide from her the rest of the festival.”

  “Good luck with that. You kind of stand out in a cherry basket,” Chesney said.

  I made another face.

  Hazel was with Huckleberry in the grass under the booth. Huckleberry was in her lap while she read a book and had her earbuds in listening to music. I was glad the two were occupied so that I could talk to Chesney without Hazel overhearing me. “Hazel said that you needed me. She gave me the impression it was an emergency.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say it was an emergency. Stacey was here in full hair and makeup for the play.” She paused. “And boy was she steamed.”

  That’s what I was afraid that she would say.

  Chapter Two

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Stacey and I were currently at odds over my grandmother’s stocks, which I had found hidden on the farm. My grandmother had hidden the stocks before her death more than fifteen years ago in the hopes I would find them, cash them in, and use them to save the farm. That was how I intended to use the money, but a disagreement between my father and Stacey, both of whom were valid heirs to my grandmother, had brought everything to a screeching halt. The stocks were valuable, and I didn’t disagree with Stacey’s claim that she was entitled to a portion of the money, if not half. My father, as my grandmother’s last living child, disagreed.

  I couldn’t help but worry over why Stacey would be looking for me at the National Cherry Festival. She had hardly spoken to me the last four months. She was on speaking terms with my father because he was an actor in the Shakespeare play she was directing at the festival, but things were tense between them as well. My father was the one digging his heels in that Stacey wasn’t entitled to any of my grandmother’s stocks because she sold her half of the farm. As usual, I was getting the blame for the dispute.