Софи Райан - The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

“In other words, the salt is just the way Mother Nature made it.”

Rose turned to look at Liz and nodded. “That’s right.”

“Okay, I get that part,” I said. “I’m guessing the sea salt is more expensive because of the quality and because the entire process is pretty labor intensive.”

“That’s likely why Natalie was looking for a less expensive alternative,” Rose said.

“So what did she find? Table salt?”

A cynical snort came from the seat behind me. “More like road salt,” Liz said.

My gaze darted to Rose again. “Seriously? The same stuff they put on the roads when it’s icy?”

“Essentially.”

“No wonder she was being investigated.”

“In her defense, Alfred thinks that Natalie didn’t realize she was buying road salt. She may have believed she’d just been getting a slightly lesser quality salt without the trace minerals.”

“So what prompted the investigation?” I asked. I had my window cracked just a little and I could smell the ocean air.

“Customer complaints,” Liz said. “People were developing rashes and hives. Whatever the products had been doing for people’s skin in the past they weren’t having the same effect.”

“And you’re certain Natalie is going to show up today?” I asked.

“One hundred percent,” Liz replied. “You might say Charlie Carroll made her an offer she can’t refuse.”

“Charlie Carroll is the supplier Natalie has been using.” The road curved inland and we started up a long hill.

“That’s right,” Rose said.

“So what’s the payoff? Why help us?”

“Maybe Carroll got an offer too good to refuse,” Liz said.

I looked at her in the rearview mirror again. “What did you do this time?”

Her chin came up and she squared her shoulders. “I didn’t do anything. I simply pointed out that it made a lot more sense to help us than it would to get the police tangled up in that business.”

“Which is true,” Rose added helpfully. Sitting there with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap she looked just like someone’s doting grandmother, which meant people who didn’t know her tended to underestimate Rose. Most didn’t do it twice.

“So you blackmailed the owner?” I was directing my comment to Liz.

“I did not blackmail anyone. All I did was point out that it was in Carroll’s best interests—as well as ours—not to involve the police at this point in time .” She stressed the last part of the sentence.

I took one hand off the steering wheel for a moment and rubbed the space between my eyebrows.

“Do you have a headache, dear?” Rose asked.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “But I do have a bit of a pain in the neck.”

“I’ll bring you my magic bag after supper. You can heat it in the microwave. It’s very good for things like that.”

Behind me I heard Liz laugh.

Carroll Salt Works was just off the road in Marshfield. I could see the salt houses in the field beyond the parking lot, their rounded tops stretching long and low in the cleared space surrounded by trees. There was a bit of a breeze and I could smell the bite of salt in the warm summer air. “But this looks like the same kind of organic salt works that you described,” I said to Rose as we got out of the SUV in the gravel parking lot.

“Oh, it is,” she said. “The product Natalie has been buying is trucked down from a salt mine in Quebec.”

Liz climbed out of the backseat and smoothed the front of her blue and white tunic. Instead of her usual high heels she’d made a concession to the uneven terrain and was wearing a pair of canvas platform shoes with a peep toe and a rope wedge heel—the equivalent, for her, of flats.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” I asked.

She tipped her head to one side and squinted at me, wrinkling her nose. “Such a cynic,” she said. She turned and looked toward a gray-shingled building at the far end of the gravel lot. The story-and-a-half structure had a roll-up garage door just right of center and a window to the right of that. Left of the garage door was what I was guessing was the entrance to the business office. The inner door was open and I could see what looked like a desk through the wooden screen door. Someone was walking across the parking lot toward us.

“There’s Charlie,” Liz said, starting toward the salt works owner.

Charlie Carroll wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I’d been expecting someone older and harder both in physicality and in bearing.

I’d been expecting a man.

“Charlie Carroll is a woman,” I said softly to Rose.

“Oh, didn’t you realize that?” she said.

“Neither you nor Liz said she was a woman.”

Rose stopped and frowned. “Didn’t we? Oh my goodness.” She put one hand to her chest. “Did you ask?”

“No,” I said slowly. “I just assumed.”

She patted my arm, a gesture all three of them used when they were trying to humor me as though I were a child. “You shouldn’t make assumptions, dear,” she said. “It’s a much better idea to get the facts.”

“Yes, I can see that,” I said. I could see what they’d done, too. When I’d insisted on joining them for this . . . caper . . . they’d both taken a bit of offense at the implication that I didn’t think they could handle things themselves. This bit of subterfuge was a way of pointing out that I didn’t know everything. I turned to look at Rose. I could feel a smile pulling at my mouth. I’d been bested. I wasn’t quite sure what to say.

As if she could read my mind—and I’d had the uncomfortable feeling more than once that she could—Rose leaned toward me. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘touché,’” she said with a smile.

Charlie Carroll was maybe five foot five, an inch or so shorter than me. I was guessing she was somewhere in her late thirties to early forties. Her strawberry blond hair was cut short and her smooth skin suggested she was pretty diligent about wearing sunscreen. She wore knee-length khaki shorts, green rubber boots that rose almost to her knees and a gray T-shirt. She looked strong and solid with the kind of muscled arms that suggested many hard days of work as opposed to hard workouts.

“Sarah Grayson, meet Charlie Carroll,” Liz said.

Charlie offered her hand and we shook. The calluses I felt told me that she was hands-on in the business.

“Natalie is pretty good about time,” she said. “That means we have about half an hour until she gets here.” She looked at me. “Would you like a bit of a tour?”

I nodded. “Thank you. I would.”

She started across the parking lot to the domed buildings Rose had said were the salt houses, and the three of us followed. “These buildings are essentially greenhouses,” Charlie explained. “We use the sun and the wind to evaporate the water.”

Closer to the buildings what I thought of as the smell of the ocean was even stronger.

“Like any farmer, we’re dependent on the weather.”

As we walked from one building to the next Charlie explained the process in a little more detail. “The water goes into the first set of houses where anything that might have been in it can settle out. At fifty percent salinity it’s pumped into a second set of houses where the water is reduced to even greater salinity. Finally it ends up in the finishing house where the rest of the water is evaporated and what’s left is just pure sea salt.” She smiled. “Some processors use heat to extract the salt. We let Mother Nature do the work for us.”

She went on to explain how the salt was ground, with about half of it ending up flavored for the restaurants that made up a large portion of the company’s business.