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  Faria climbed out of the patrol car and turned his head to follow my gaze. "Don't get any thoughts about talking to the press about today's events."

  "The press?" That might explain why the man seemed familiar. Perhaps he was a local news anchor, who'd done a report for a Seattle station at some point.

  "Yeah, Matt Viera. Local reporter." Faria said. "Never mind him. The tech's here to take your clothes."

  It seemed a bit excessive for what had been a simple assault by vegetable, but given my lack of experience with the police, perhaps they were always this thorough.

  A middle-aged female forensics tech led me over to a private spot where I could change out of my clothes. I hadn't noticed until then, but some of the red stuff that I'd seen on the market manager had somehow gotten onto my light-colored capris. I slipped out of them and into a pair of gray sweats that the tech provided.

  Faria lingered nearby while I changed. I'd just handed my pants to the forensics tech when someone I couldn't see called out, "Hey, look. It's little Richie Faria pretending he's a homicide detective."

  "Yeah, go ahead and laugh," Faria said. "Bet I'll make detective before either of you do."

  Derisive laughter answered him. Then his heckler said, "Hey, we know what you can do. You can be in charge of all the murders by vegetable."

  Murder? The market manager had been alive when help had arrived. Had he really died, or were they just teasing?

  "It's better than being stuck in your dead-end jobs," Faria said. "Besides, a mashed-up hot pepper may not be a traditional weapon, but Randy Stiles is just as dead as if he were shot in the heart."

  * * *

  The tech didn't seem to expect me to carry on a conversation, which was just as well. My reputation for being unflappable had never been tested this thoroughly before. I'd lost a few clients to sudden, unexpected deaths, but that was different from being right next to the person in his final moments.

  When the tech told me I could leave, I was still too shaken to trust myself behind the wheel of a car, even for the short drive back to the Ocean View B&B. Then I remembered I'd been on my way to meet with Gil Torres when all hell had broken loose. I texted her to let her know I'd been detained.

  I was starting to regain my usual calm demeanor, and I still had about half an hour before I needed to leave for my appointment with Alex at Finials and Facades, since it was just up the road from here, a little past the B&B. The police had blocked off the far end of the market area with crime scene tape, but I might be able to get a quick glimpse of the other stalls before I had to leave.

  The first space belonged to the pepper farmer, but he wasn't there. I glanced back at the stage. Maybe he was the one in the hot seat with Detective Ohlsen. Faria had said the apparent murder weapon was hot peppers, after all.

  The farmer in the next stall emerged from behind his crates of pears to say, "I'm sorry, but the police have closed down the market for the day. We're all packing up, so we're ready to leave as soon as we've been interviewed." He had a slight trace of a Southern accent that I thought might have been from Virginia, perhaps because I associated that state with Thomas Jefferson's concept gentleman farmers. Despite this man's casual, modern clothes, he had a touch of Renaissance elegance to him, from his speech patterns to his posture and even his long, elegant fingers.

  His lime green T-shirt identified him as the farmer who'd been arguing with the market manager earlier. The logo that I hadn't been able to make out before was a fruit tree with the words Pear Stirpes Orchard underneath it, along with the date it was established, a mere three years ago.

  Actually, the two men hadn't been arguing exactly. It had been more one-sided than that. The pear farmer had caught the manager—what was it Richie Faria had called him? Randy Stiles, that was it—by the arm and said something to him, and then Randy had exploded in anger while the farmer waited with apparent resigned patience for it to end.

  The farmer seemed just as imperturbably resigned to the closing of the market now. I wondered if he took everything that calmly. Losing a whole day's worth of sales after going to all the effort of transporting his goods here had to be frustrating.

  "I suppose knowing that someone died after eating one of the market's products isn't particularly good for business."

  "Everyone always blames the farmer," he said. "But it's hardly ever our fault when someone gets sick. Randy had an extreme allergy to peppers."

  "What's so special about this guy's peppers that he'd risk anaphylactic shock to eat them, then?"

  "That's what I've been wondering myself," he said. "I'm Merle Curtis, by the way."

  "Maria Dolores."

  "Not much of a homecoming for you, is it?"

  "Except for the dead body, it's actually been quite nice. A lot better than I'd expected."

  His eyebrows rose. "What could you have thought would be so bad about a weekend in a friendly little coastal town?"

  "My mother grew up here and didn't have fond memories of the place. I never had a reason before now to find out if there was another side to the story."

  "That's the first I've heard of anyone having a bad word to say about the place, and I talked to a lot of people before moving here."

  "She left here more than thirty years ago," I said. "Maybe it's different now."

  "Or maybe you're different from your mother."

  That much was definitely true. My mother was high-strung, melodramatic, and extroverted, while I was more laid-back, contemplative, and happy to be alone. We had a good relationship, but our interests and attitudes seldom overlapped, and I never quite knew how to respond to her emotional outbursts, while she couldn't understand my surface calm in a crisis.

  "Tell me about your orchard. Is it just pears, or do you grow anything else?"

  "It's mostly fruit—organic pears, apples, and cherries—although I do fill in the gaps with some other crops. Not peppers, though, if that's what you're wondering. They've never appealed to me. Not to eat, not to grow, and definitely not to kill someone with."

  "You think Randy was force-fed?" I'd been clinging to the hope that the police were assuming the worst and that it had just been an accident. "Someone intended to make him sick? Or even to kill him?"

  "It crossed my mind," he said. "But I've been trained to anticipate the worst."

  That would explain his rush to assume that Randy Stiles had been murdered. "And yet you moved to a place known as Danger Cove? The name didn't give you pause?"

  "There's a real advantage to expecting the worst from a place," he said. "It means I'm never disappointed, and I'm frequently pleasantly surprised."

  * * *

  Rockgrove was a stately old mansion just off Cliffside Drive, at the highest point of the Danger Cove inlet. It was both Alex Jordan's home and a showpiece for her renovation and restoration services.

  The friend who'd recommended that I talk to Alex had led me to believe she'd flipped hundreds of houses and done all the work single-handedly, so I'd been expecting an Amazon of a woman, probably at least in her forties. Alex Jordan was almost the exact opposite of that. She had the curves of a warrior princess, but she was shorter than I and at least ten years younger. She dressed the part, at least, in a lightweight work shirt, jeans, and steel-toed boots, and there were calluses on the hand that she offered when she opened the door to let me in.

  "You must be Maria Dolores," she said. "You look just like your famous ancestor. I saw a picture of her at one of the meetings for the Save the Lighthouse Committee."

  From behind a closed door, I heard a shrill voice yelling at someone for being a bad boy.

  Alex said, "That's Smitty. My grandmother's parrot." She led me in the direction of the voice. "I'll put a blanket over his cage, and he'll quiet down so we can talk."

  The parlor lived up to everything my friend had said about Alex's skills with bringing an old building back to its original condition, while still being comfortable for everyday living. The weathered leather couches and overs
ized armchairs were littered with throw pillows and handmade afghan blankets. On one wall was a wide stone fireplace, and another had big windows that faced the Pacific Ocean. The birdcage, a huge antique of brass and iron, was more decorative than its occupant, an ill-tempered parrot with scraggly, faded feathers.

  "Help yourself to some lemonade while I take care of Smitty." Alex tossed a blanket over the cage, and the bird settled down after a few irritable squawks, like a toddler resisting bedtime.

  A side table held a pitcher, an ice bucket, and glasses rimmed with pink sugar. "You shouldn't have gone to so much trouble."

  "I didn't," Alex said. "I can build or rebuild a house, but don't ask me to do anything else domestic. Dolly made the lemonade. Squeezed the lemons herself and everything. She used to be my grandmother's cook, and now she's part of the family. She still likes to cook for us, though. She has very firm notions of the proper way to treat guests, and they all start with food and beverages."

  I poured myself a drink and settled into one of the armchairs. "So tell me about house flipping. You obviously started young, but is it too late for me?"

  "It depends on whether you've got the passion for it," Alex said. "You'll face some resistance from the no-girls-allowed segments of the construction industry, but if you love the work and you're good at it, you'll find a loyal crew. It's not the get-rich-quick scheme that the media likes to portray it as, but you can make an honest living. And you'll never get bored. There's always some unexpected disaster waiting for you."

  I didn't like surprises. Growing up with a flighty mother and four younger siblings who took after her had made me crave predictability. "Like what?"

  "Termites, wood rot, and squatters. I can deal with the vagrants and raccoons, but the colony of bats was a real challenge," Alex said. "Bat guano can wreak real havoc with support beams and wall studs."

  It sounded like house flipping was nothing but one big, startling surprise after another, without the prospect of cake and ice cream when everything settled down. I wouldn't know where to start with any of the problems Alex had mentioned, or even how to tell if support beams had had any havoc wreaked on them. When I'd put house flipping on my list of potential careers, I'd been picturing a bit of hammering, painting, and kitchen designing, not getting bat guano under my artistic fingernails.

  Alex continued, "The absolute worst, though, was finding the dead body in the bathtub of a house I'd just bought at foreclosure."

  At least that was something I understood. "That could happen to anyone, anywhere. I found a dead body at the farmer's market today."

  "I heard," Alex said. "I have a friend who's really into crime stories, and he listens to the police scanner. I knew Randy Stiles in high school. Not well. He was a couple of years younger than me. I'm not entirely surprised he died young. He had a temper and was better at escalating tension than defusing it. Did someone push him off the cliff?"

  I shook my head. "I'm no expert, but it looked to me like he ate something he was allergic to."

  "Must have been something new," Alex said. "Everyone in school knew he had some serious food allergies. I remember him being particularly allergic to peppers, but he had a whole list of things he wouldn't eat, and it seemed to keep growing. He always made sure everyone around him knew about it too."

  Then why had he suddenly thrown caution to the wind and eaten peppers in a secluded corner of the farmer's market? And why hadn't he used his EpiPen? Surely a person with known, serious allergies would carry one. Especially while working in a farmer's market, where he might accidentally be exposed to one of his triggers.

  Maybe Merle Curtis hadn't been wrong to assume the worst about Randy's death. I'd been trying to keep an open mind, but if the residents of Danger Cove really were as horrible as my mother claimed, then it would be easy to believe that someone here might have intentionally exposed someone with severe allergies to a trigger food and then prevented him from using his EpiPen.

  The only problem with that theory was that all of my firsthand experience with Danger Cove's residents completely contradicted what my mother believed about them. Everyone I'd met, from Gil Torres to Alex Jordan and even Merle Curtis, had been as friendly as the chamber of commerce literature promised. They weren't at all the spiteful, vicious people of my mother's stories, capable of cold-blooded murder.

  And yet, Randy Stiles was dead after ingesting a food he knew full well could kill him.

  * * *

  After I'd heard enough to be sure that house flipping was not the career for me, Alex walked me to my car. When I mentioned I was looking for a place to have lunch, she recommended the Smugglers' Tavern, a little farther down Cliffside Drive, where there was great food, friendly service, and the best view of a local landmark, a rock formation known as the Pirate's Hook.

  The earlier clouds had dissipated, replaced with warm June sunshine, so I opted for a table in the garden overlooking the cove, where I could see both the Pirate's Hook and the lighthouse. As I headed out there, I heard my name being called. To my right, the teacher who'd directed the play was leaving her table to come over to me.

  "It was such an honor to have you in the audience, Ms. Dolores," she said. "Your ancestors were such an important part of Danger Cove history, and having you here this weekend, well, it just made the past seem more real for my students."

  "They did such a great job," I said. "It was an honor to be here, Mrs. Kerrigan."

  "Oh, call me Debra. I would have introduced myself back at the lighthouse grounds, but you know ten-year-olds." Her fond smile made me think she really cared about her students, even when she was criticizing them. "Can't leave them for a moment, not even to go to the bathroom, or they'll get into mischief. Probably burn down the stage if I gave them half the chance. Not that they're bad, but they do need the discipline at that age."

  "They certainly seemed well-behaved to me." I remembered only too well my marginally successful efforts to corral my four siblings when they were in elementary school.

  "I'm just sorry that your visit was marred by such an unfortunate incident," Debra said. "Most people here are the kindest, nicest folks you'd ever meet. Not at all the sort of people who get themselves killed. I will never understand why Randy Stiles was appointed the market manager. I could have told them his weakest skill was in using his words instead of his fists. And he held a mean grudge."

  "With anyone in particular?"

  "I couldn't say. I have enough to do keeping my current students out of mischief without feeling responsible for the ones who graduated." She leaned in a little closer and lowered her voice. "But you saw him with that crazy person in the crowd today, and I heard he wanted to exclude Manny's strawberries from the market, just because of some silly rivalry they had back in high school."

  That sounded like the stories my mother had told, of cliques and bullies and being run out of town for not fitting in. Perhaps she hadn't been so wrong about the town.

  The appalling possibility must have shown on my face, because Debra laughed and waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, listen to me. You're going to think Danger Cove is a horrible place. It's not, really. I should let you enjoy your lunch. If the food here doesn't convince you that Danger Cove is a special place, then nothing will."

  * * *

  I wasn't usually the indecisive type, but I did like to gather all the possible information before investing either my money or my time. At the moment, I was experiencing information overload, leaving me torn between appreciating the view and concentrating on the menu. I'd seen enough to know both were worthy of my full attention. By raising the menu in front of my face to block the view, I'd finally managed to narrow down my lunch options to two equally excellent-sounding seafood platters. I was still undecided when I heard someone drop into the seat across from me.

  I lowered the menu to see that it was Merle Curtis, wearing a navy, summer-weight blazer over his lime green T-shirt and jeans.

  The Tavern was seated almost to capacity, both indoors
and out, and I'd traveled enough to know it was common in other countries for seating to be "family style," where any empty seat was fair game. I'd never seen it done in the U.S., but maybe that was how they did things in small towns. I certainly wouldn't know about life outside of cities. My travels had taken me only to major metropolises, and I'd lived virtually all of my life in Seattle. I grew up there, went to the University of Seattle both as an undergrad and for my MBA, and then stayed after graduation.

  I went back to studying the menu. He wasn't blocking my view, so I didn't mind sharing the table.

  "You should try the sesame tempura king prawns," he said.

  "I don't remember seeing that on the menu." I nodded at the chalkboard where the daily specials were written. "Or over there."

  "You won't find pear-berry cider on the menu either, but if you ask for it or the prawns, you'll be glad you did."

  I was usually the one giving advice and didn't generally like being on the receiving end, even when it was well-intentioned. "Do you always follow tourists around town and tell them what to do?"

  He shrugged. "Occupational hazard."

  "The cider's from your orchard, I assume."

  He hesitated for a moment. "Assumptions can be as dangerous as the waters outside the cove, but in this case, you're right."

  A waitress came over to take my order. I considered going back to one of the options I'd originally been considering, along with some lemonade, but I'd never let my emotions overrule logic. Merle was a local, he knew this restaurant better than I did, and I was curious whether his cider was any good.

  I set down the menu. "I'd like the sesame tempura king prawns, if that's available. And a pear-berry cider."

  "Great choices," the waitress said without a moment's hesitation. She scribbled on her pad, picked up what had turned out to be an unnecessary menu, and looked at Merle.