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  "Which he did." That would certainly explain why he was appointed the market manager, despite his lack of interpersonal skills.

  "He didn't make it happen entirely on his own," Merle said. "Once it was obvious that he had the basic structure in place, others came forward. Like Gil at the museum, and Debra Kerrigan and her students."

  "What's going to happen to the market without him?"

  "I'm not sure," Merle said. "Randy proved that it can be a success, so there will be more support now for continuing it. I don't mind helping out today, and I could probably cover the next couple of weekends, but only if I know someone can take over before long. Otherwise, we might as well consider this a onetime event."

  It seemed ironic that Randy's death would also mean the end of the market, the very thing he'd cared so much about. Unless the market's closing wasn't serendipitous irony, but the reason why he'd died. "Was there anyone opposed to the market for reasons other than that they just didn't want to get involved?"

  "You mean, someone who might have killed him to shut down the market?"

  "I'm just having trouble believing that someone who had spent his whole life warning people about his pepper allergy would suddenly decide to go on a capsicum binge."

  Merle looked past the neighboring pepper farmer and pointed across the street to a sprawling, gray-shingled, two-story building. "See that strip mall on the other side of Cliffside Drive?"

  There was nothing particularly remarkable about it from this distance, but I could tell the sprawling, wooden, two-story building was old, like a well-maintained antique, and it blended in nicely with the surrounding homes.

  "There's been some talk about expanding it. Gil isn't enthusiastic about the idea, because it used to be a cannery during the sardine-fishing boom of the early 1900s, and the expansion plans involve removing some of the historical features of the building. Randy really opposed it, because one of the planned uses for the new building was a grocery store that would be competition for the farmer's market."

  "And vice versa. A grocery store wouldn't appreciate having a competitor right across the street."

  "Least of all one with better, fresher products."

  We both stared at the building, as if that would tell us anything, until I heard my name being called and turned to see Debra Kerrigan scurrying toward us.

  "Sorry to drag you away," she said, "but Mayor Kallakala would like to meet you, and he's only got a few minutes free before it's time for his speech."

  * * *

  After the obligatory photo op with the mayor, I got stuck listening to his speech. Edward Kallakala was a good, off-the-cuff speaker with a great deal of charisma, but as an outsider, I didn't know anything about the various initiatives he mentioned and that drew enthusiastic responses from everyone else around me. Still, I was fortunate that he wasn't a typical politician in love with the sound of his voice, and he kept his speech brief.

  When it ended, Debra kept me from getting back to thinking about who might have killed Randy Stiles by introducing me to what seemed like half the population of Danger Cove. The socializing finally came to an end, and Debra led me over to a large canopy set up between the stage and the medical services tent. Underneath its cover were five plywood banquet tables covered with a huge assortment of baked goods. The entries had already been narrowed down to the best in each category by a panel of judges consisting of local high school teachers.

  The finalists' entries had been moved to a single table, set apart from the others, and all I had to do was decide whether the five products were worthy of the "lighthouse seal of approval." Someone had even designed little round stickers featuring a cameo of my great-great-great-grandmother, to be used by the winners to advertise their products. It was a nice idea, but I wasn't entirely sure the original Maria Dolores's stern face would be much of an incentive for customers to buy the products. She looked as forbidding and humorless as my mother described my grandmother. They'd both have been more at home on a warning label than in an advertisement.

  The contest had five categories—breads, cakes, cookies, pies, and preserves—and one of the prerequisites for entering the competition was that they had to use locally grown ingredients. The category winners consisted of sour-cherry scones shaped like little speedboats and detailed with a drizzle of chocolate, hazelnut cake, sand dollar cookies topped with hazelnuts instead of almonds, apple pie with the outline of a lighthouse cut into the top crust, and poached pears. The five anxious cooks stood behind their entries, and I tried to put them at ease by asking about the inspiration for their entries.

  I was particularly amused by the sand dollars that had been renamed "Donna Dolores Dollars," in honor of my great-great-grandmother. The middle-aged woman who'd made them explained that she felt Donna had always been overlooked, much the same way that women of a certain age still were today. "She was expected to do heroic things on a daily basis," she explained, "and it was only newsworthy when a little old lady and a young child also did them. It always seemed unfair to me, since Donna probably did most of the actual rescuing. I did some research, and apparently she was quite an amazing oarswoman. Put most of the local men to shame in summer races."

  "I wonder what Donna would have done if she'd had access to a speedboat," I said, glancing at the next entry, the plate full of boat-shaped scones.

  The young woman who'd made the scones answered. "Probably joined the smugglers. Anyone with her skills would have been recruited. It wasn't easy getting the black market goods to shore. The town's name is a reminder of just how dangerous the waters outside our cove are. Even with sonar, it's a real challenge to land anywhere along the coast, and it was infinitely harder without modern navigation aids."

  "We're not really advocating smuggling," the middle-aged woman said. "We just like to play up the history for the benefit of tourists. They think it's romantic, at least as long as it's something that happened in the past. I doubt they'd be as happy about it if it were still happening today."

  All of the conditions that had led to smuggling in the 1800s and early 1900s still applied today, in one form or another. There was always some highly sought-after product that was either prohibited or heavily taxed, which created a black market. The caves that had once held alcohol during Prohibition and other embargoed goods before that would make equally handy storage locations for more modern contraband, like untaxed cigarettes and illegal drugs.

  What if the market manager had stumbled across some illegal activity while he was preparing for yesterday's event, and that was why he'd been killed? "Are you sure there isn't any smuggling going on today?"

  Before either of the cooks could answer, Officer Faria came up behind me and said, "We need to talk to you."

  There was something about those words coming from a uniformed police officer that automatically made a person anxious. I thought even the original Maria Dolores would have known a moment of unease if she'd heard them. For a moment, my thoughts raced, trying to figure out what crime I might have unwittingly committed. Once the panic subsided, I was able to remind myself that I hadn't done anything wrong, and the officer's boss probably just wanted to ask me another question, or—better yet—tell me they'd reached a point in the investigation where they wouldn't need me any longer, so I could go home this evening after my tour of the lighthouse.

  "I'll be with you in a minute." I'd already decided that all of the entries deserved the seal of approval. "I just need to wrap things up here. It won't take long."

  "I'll be waiting over by the stage, listening to the band warm up." Faria disappeared as quickly as he'd arrived.

  I took it as a good sign that he hadn't insisted on dragging me out of the tent or staying to make sure I didn't try to escape.

  * * *

  After I'd congratulated the five winners and handed them their official seals of approval, I headed in the direction of the stage to pick up my escort. Officer Faria met me halfway, and we turned back to the market. At the far end of the stalls,
we ducked under the tape that still blocked access to the porta-potties and the crime scene. I'd noticed earlier that a new row of latrines had been set up at the opposite end of the grounds, past the stage area.

  Detective Bud Ohlsen was seated on a boulder, leaning back with his hands locked behind his head and staring at the sky. I looked up automatically, but there was nothing to see there, just a solid, brilliant blue, without even a single cloud.

  "I've got her," Faria said.

  Ohlsen started. His hands dropped from the back of his head, and he slid off the boulder to stand. "Thanks for coming up here."

  It wasn't like I'd really had a choice, not when he'd sent a uniformed officer to escort me. I didn't know exactly what Faria could have done if I'd refused, but I was fairly sure it would have ended with me being stuck here in Danger Cove even longer than just the one extra day, in accommodations much less pleasant than the Ocean View B&B.

  "Have you closed the investigation?"

  Ohlsen sighed. "Not even close. I was hoping you could show us exactly where you first saw Randy."

  I pointed to the far side of the last porta-potty to our left. I hadn't noticed at the time, but behind where I'd found Randy, there was a boulder that had to be at least five feet high, cutting off the view of the stage and the rest of the lighthouse grounds. "He was over there. On the ground, crawling toward me."

  "Is there anything else, anything at all, maybe something that seemed unusual?" He gestured for me to go over and take a closer look. "Anything that was different from how it is now?"

  As far as I was concerned, once you've seen one porta-potty and its surroundings, you've seen them all. The ground here was rocky, with a few spindly weeds and grasses that had been trampled, either by Randy or by the emergency responders. There wasn't even any litter, either here or anywhere else on the lighthouse grounds. I had to wonder if keeping things trash-free was also Randy's doing, part of his job as the market manager, and something he'd excelled at, unlike his people skills.

  "I'm sorry, but it all happened so fast, and I'd never been in a situation like that before. I can't remember much of anything except the scared look on the young man's face. You have to find out what happened to him."

  "I will."

  "Can you tell me if you've been able to determine whether it was an accident?" I said. "I've heard that Randy had severe allergies, but wouldn't he have carried an EpiPen?"

  "He did," Ohlsen said. "Unfortunately, they fail sometimes, and the consequences can be tragic. That's why they're usually sold in two-packs these days. If one doesn't work, there's a backup. I was hoping you might have seen one on the ground, because we only found the one that had apparently misfired. The second one is missing. If someone took it away from him, that would put a whole different light on this case."

  "It certainly would." I'd never considered becoming a detective in my next career, but if I had, Ohlsen's casual acceptance of the possibility that someone had done such a cruel thing would have changed my mind. I'd helped plenty of clients anticipate and prepare for worst-case scenarios, but that was different. The risks had been merely financial, nothing like death or even physical pain and suffering. It had to be incredibly frustrating for the detective, knowing it was too late to prevent the crime. I preferred getting involved when there was still a chance to prevent the bad things from happening.

  "Of course, it's also possible that Randy had used the first one some other time. He did have serious allergies, after all," Ohlsen said. "I guess you're done here. You can go back to Seattle whenever you're ready. We can contact you there if we have any further questions."

  As I ducked under the police tape to return to the market, free of my police escort, I wondered if Ohlsen was giving all the other witnesses and potential suspects the same speech. Assuming Randy's death hadn't been accidental, what chance would the police have of finding the killer after everyone went home? I hadn't really known Randy, but after finding him in his death throes, I felt a sense of responsibility to make sure his case was solved, much as I'd always taken my clients' financial challenges personally. I couldn't bring him back, but maybe I could figure out why he'd died.

  I wasn't a trained detective and I didn't want to make a career out of it, but just this once, I might have some useful skills. My experience as a financial planner gave me the tools to do what I'd always heard was the key to solving crimes: follow the money.

  * * *

  The money trail had to start and end right here at the farmer's market. From what I'd heard, the farmer's market had been Randy's whole life for the past few months. That, plus the location and timing of his death suggested that whoever killed him had to have been someone he'd antagonized in the course of running this weekend's event. The most likely candidates were the market's vendors, since I couldn't see any reason for Randy to have argued with any of the customers. There was the owner of the strip mall across the street too, but if he was the killer, he wouldn't have any reason to still be here today for me to interrogate. In other circumstances, I might have suspected the pepper fan who'd been ejected from the market, even though there wasn't a financial motive, but according to Merle, the loud man had an airtight alibi, since he'd been in police custody at the time of the murder.

  That meant that suspect number one for me to talk to was Manny Alvaraz, both because of Randy's dying words, but also because of the feud the two men had apparently had. I headed for the stall Merle had identified as belonging to Alvarez. His specialty was strawberries, and he was also offering freshly baked shortcakes and whipping cream, as well as little jars of dipping chocolate. He was almost a clone of Randy, the same age and not very tall, although he was in much better physical shape, without Randy's extra weight. As I approached, he ducked into the back of his space to lift a stack of berry-filled flats almost as tall as he was and carry them out to the front to replenish his display.

  Judging by the ease with which he'd carried those flats, I would have expected him to win any physical altercation with the pudgy Randy. I glanced at the official certificate that confirmed the stall was owned by a Manuel Alvarez, and he was an approved vendor at the Lighthouse Farmer's Market. The scrawled signature at the bottom was illegible, but presumably it belonged to Randy Stiles, in his capacity as the market's manager. What if Randy had threatened to retract the certification for some reason? That would have affected Alvarez financially, possibly even to the point where he'd demanded that Randy meet him out beyond the porta-potties, where no one could see or hear them, and a brawl had ensued.

  I could understand how Alvarez would have been angry in that case, but how would he have benefitted from killing Randy? From what Merle had said, without a dedicated manager like Randy, there was a good chance that future dates for the farmer's market would be cancelled. Besides, where would Alvarez have gotten the peppers to rub in Randy's face? They weren't part of his stall's strawberry shortcake theme.

  It struck me that I'd been assuming that the fatal peppers had come from Tyler Kline's stall, but perhaps there were other vendors selling them. I backtracked to the top of the hill, checking each stall to see if anyone else was selling peppers. All of them told me the same thing, in the same slightly irritated tone: that they had adhered to the market rules, which required that all products come from their own farms, and peppers wouldn't be in season for another three to four weeks. They'd also all volunteered that some people, like young Tyler Kline, hadn't been quite so respectful of the rules. His father had a farm on the outskirts of town, but Kline had to have imported the peppers from somewhere considerably south of Danger Cove.

  The image of Tyler Kline following in the smuggling tradition of Danger Cove by unloading a cargo of hot peppers from a speedboat to one of the caves at the end of Two Mile Beach flashed through my head. A silly fantasy, of course. There was nothing criminal about selling non-local peppers, and it probably didn't even violate the health and safety regulations, so Kline had undoubtedly simply driven them up from California ins
tead of taking the much more dangerous sea route.

  By the time I reached the last stall before Kline's, it was clear that he was the only person who could have provided the peppers that had killed Randy Stiles. That didn't mean Kline had actually been the one to expose Randy to them, though. The number of customers waiting in line to buy his peppers was proof that anyone could have a handful of them. Randy could have even bought them himself, or picked them up when someone dropped them, or any of a hundred different scenarios.

  And yet, I couldn't shake the notion that Kline was doing something underhanded. Not just because he'd broken the market rules about only selling locally grown produce, but also because of the way he'd faded out of sight when his customer had caused a ruckus during the play. He hadn't appreciated the free advertising. That was no way for a businessman to act.

  What was he hiding?

  I paused beside Merle Curtis's display of pears and studied Kline's stall. Other than the crates of produce stacked in the back, there was nothing more than a pepper-strewn plywood table, a scale, and a stack of little brown lunch bags. Kline wore an old-fashioned money apron, so there was no need for a cash box.

  Everything was out in plain sight. Peppers, peppers, and more peppers. They certainly weren't illegal, and the customers didn't seem to care where they'd come from, since they were practically begging Kline to take their money in return for some of the peppers.

  I turned to look at the other stalls to see if all of the buyers were that free with their cash. As far as I could tell, no one was that eager to part with their money for other products. Not even for Alvarez's strawberry shortcakes, which I'd only managed to resist because of this morning's overindulgence in cinnamon buns.

  So what was the appeal of Kline's peppers? They looked pretty ordinary to me, like jalapeño peppers that had been allowed to fully ripen to red. Even knowing that there had to be something special about them, the only differences I noticed were that they were slightly curved and a little pointier at the tip than a jalapeño.