The Clue at Black Creek Farm (Nancy Drew Diaries #9)(13)

She ran up to the closest tree and leaned up as far as she could, plucking a trio of cherries from a low branch. “Mmmmm,” Bess murmured, popping one into her mouth. But almost immediately, her mouth puckered.

“Ugh!” she cried, spitting the chewed-up cherry into her hand.

“Yup,” a female voice suddenly spoke up from behind me. I turned to find the same young girl we’d seen working in the kitchen at the Black Creek buffet. She looked amused. “Those are sour cherries.”

Bess spat out the juice onto the grass. “Why would anyone grow sour cherries?” she asked.

The girl laughed. “They’re not so sour when you bake them into a pie or cook them into jam with lots of sugar,” she said. “They’re just not so tasty right off the tree. Anyway, can I help you? I’m Lori.”

I smiled. “Hi, I’m Nancy, and my hungry friend’s name is Bess. You might remember seeing us at the Black Creek Farm dinner the other night.”

Bess’s cheeks blushed nearly the color of the cherries. “Hi,” she said. “I don’t usually steal cherries.”

Lori nodded. “I believe you,” she said, very seriously. Then we all laughed.

“I’m here because I wanted to ask you about what’s been going on at Black Creek Farm,” I said.

Lori’s expression turned solemn. “You mean what happened at the buffet the other night, with Julie getting sick?” she asked. “That was terrible.”

I exchanged a glance with Bess. She’s acting like she doesn’t know about the vandalism. But was it an act?

I held up the pair of blue sunglasses I’d found in the greenhouse. “Um, do you recognize these?”

Lori’s eyes flashed with recognition. “Sure. Those are mine. I must have left them at the farm yesterday morning.”

I handed them to her. “Where were you working yesterday?”

Lori took the sunglasses and put them on top of her head. “Kind of all over. I was picking sweet potatoes, and then I was in the greenhouse for a while.”

“Did you notice anything unusual at the greenhouse?” I asked. The vandalism we’d seen that day was certainly unusual. But also, if she was behind it, I expected to see a flash of discomfort cross Lori’s face—the realization that her crime had been discovered.

She just looked at me blankly, though. “Oh, the door was unlocked,” she said after a few seconds. “That’s a little weird, because Sam usually locks it.”

“Did you lock it when you finished?” I asked.

Lori shook her head. “I was worried maybe he’d left it unlocked for a reason,” she explained. “Like he or Bob had forgotten their keys. So when I was finished working in there, I left the door unlocked.”

Hmmmm. I glanced at Bess, who raised her eyebrows at me.

“And it seemed . . . totally normal when you left?” I asked.

Lori looked like she was beginning to wonder where these questions were coming from. “It looked totally normal,” she affirmed. “Um, why are you asking?”

Bess cleared her throat. “Nancy’s trying to get to the bottom of what happened at the buffet,” she explained breezily. “She’s, like, a teenage sleuth.” She made a big show of looking over at me and then back at Lori and shrugging, like What can you do? “Keeps her off the streets,” she added.

Lori smiled. “Um, is that a real thing? Teenage sleuth?”

While I turned red, Bess grinned and leaned close to Lori. “I know, it sounds like a bad TV series or something, right?” she asked. “Anyway, do you work for the Heyworths a lot? Sam says you’re into organic farming.”

Lori nodded. “Yeah, I kind of wish my parents would give it a shot here, but they’re afraid they’d lose money.”

“What’s so much better about organic?” Bess asked. Her tone was totally casual, but I could see the focus in her eyes. She was information-gathering.

“It’s better for everyone, basically,” Lori said, her dark eyes serious. “It’s less harmful to the environment, to wild animals. It’s more sustainable. And there’s some evidence that the produce is actually more nutritious.”

“I thought those studies were inconclusive,” I piped up, channeling Ned.

Lori rolled her eyes. “They’re conclusive enough for me,” she said. “So yeah, since my parents wouldn’t budge, I spend some time at Sam’s farm volunteering and learning how organic farming works.”

“Do you want to be a farmer?” Bess asked.

“Eventually,” she said, “definitely. I have a year of high school left, and then I want to go to college to study agriculture. My plan is, after that, I’ll work at other organic farms until I can raise enough money to start my own.”

Bess smiled encouragingly. “You don’t think your parents would let you run part of theirs?”

Lori shrugged, then looked away. “Maybe,” she admitted. “If I come back with a college degree and still say we should go organic, maybe they’d take me more seriously.” She paused, looking from Bess to me. “Hey, have you guys been at Black Creek today?” she asked.

Bess and I said that we had.

“How’s Julie doing?” Lori asked, her expression serious again. “She was still kind of weak yesterday.”