IX
The local farmer's market opened at noon on Saturday and Mulder made sure that they were there shortly afterward. He insisted that Scully wear the t-shirt he'd gotten her and despite vocal misgivings she did, but had to admit that they matched like the honeymooners they were supposed to be with his bright green Dinosaur World cap. At least she'd insisted on a less garish t-shirt then he'd been looking at; though it was the same noxious color as his cap, it was a women's baby-doll cut and only had a small embroidered T-Rex head on the upper right breast.
Still, he thought as he trotted behind her catching up after he'd stopped to look at a display of hand-carved walking sticks, it certainly fit her well as did the faded jeans she was wearing. It was all he could do to keep his hands off of her; it was difficult not to put his arm around that slender waist or want to brush a hand over that curvy ass. She'd put up with it to keep their cover, he knew, but would he hear it when they were alone? He would indeed, and the jury was still out on whether or not it was worth it.
But he could, and did, sling an arm loosely around her shoulders as they walked. She didn't reciprocate but stayed relaxed beneath his arm, which was half the battle. It was a warm morning so he didn't pull her against his side but he did rub her upper arm and shoulder lightly, about all he figured he could get away with at the moment. The evening before she'd been rather remote when they'd gone to the room for the evening, burying herself in a novel while sitting in the window seat and staying up past when he got tired enough to lay down. It had sucked because he'd had to stay on his side of the bed and once again she was already up when he woke.
Scully stepped over to the side of a booth busily selling hollowed-out gourds carved into amusing faces, stopped, and said in a low voice, "There she is. Doesn't look like business is exactly booming for her, does it?"
The attractive but washed-out young blonde who had been their guide on the advanced tour was sitting in a rickety-looking wooden folding chair behind a U-shaped trio of cheap auditorium tables, a ratty, dirt-splattered blue tarp suspended from a series of rusty poles dug into the ground above her as a sunshade. Bundles of what he guessed were dried herbs hung from the edges of the tarp while the tables were covered with produce: tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, onions, jars of what looked to be home-canned pickles and smaller ones of jellies or jams, and bunches of leafy vegetables that he couldn't identify. She looked rather sad and lonely, he thought, sitting and dejectedly reading a battered old paperback. Unlike most of the others, however, she was dressed in a nice green-patterned pullover shirt and clean dark blue jeans whereas the majority of vendors seemed to have just crawled out of their gardens, basements, attics, or from beneath a long-abandoned car. Just behind the front table he could see a dog at her feet, a large bundle of grey and white fur although he couldn't make out much else about the animal.
Though people thronged the open-air flea and farmer's market, which was setup in the large weedy lot of what appeared to be a long-defunct drive-in movie theater without the screen or concession stand but still containing the speaker posts, no one was anywhere near Lucy Burley's booth. Her tables also appeared full unlike many of the other vendors' booths, most of which seemed to be being rapidly depleted.
"No, it seems that she's being ignored or shunned," Mulder observed quietly, leaning over to murmur into her ear. "Looks sad, doesn't she?"
Scully nodded. "We should go talk to her, but I don't really want to buy anything; what are we going to do with a bunch of radishes or a bag of cilantro?"
He wasn't sure what cilantro was and decided to let it pass. For now. "We can give away whatever we buy, I'm sure that someone will want it," he pointed out. "I can't think of any other way to strike up a conversation with her."
"Me too," Scully agreed. "Okay, Mister Fox, lead on."
He glanced down at her to see a smile quirking at the corner of her mouth and for one timeless moment he damn near leaned down and kissed her; it was all he could do to resist the impulse. Those impulses had been getting stronger and coming more often lately. He only hoped that when he snapped and actually did it they weren't in public in case she popped him with that right hook again.
"Mulder? You all right?"
He shook himself mentally and gave her shoulders a light squeeze. "Yeah. Come on, Mrs. Fox, let's get it on."
As they headed for Lucy Burley's booth Mulder was surprised to feel Scully's arm go around his waist and her fingers hook in one of the back belt loops of his jeans. He wanted to look down at her but was afraid it would break their cover if he looked shocked that his "wife" was putting her arm around him. Besides which it was just fine with him that the side of her breast was now brushing against his side.
"Oh, what a pretty dog!" Scully exclaimed as they neared the table, peering beneath the one Lucy sat behind. "What kind is he or she?"
Trust her, Mulder thought as he let go of her shoulders, to find a surefire way to engage a person in conversation.
"Oh—hi there. He's a purebred Bearded Collie," the young woman said, setting her open book face-down on the table in front of her while reaching down to pet the dog's head as it lifted. "I always wanted one and saved up to buy him from a breeder."
Scully crouched down in front of the table as the dog stood up. "Is he friendly?" she asked.
"He sure is, I made sure of that; he's got his Canine Good Citizenship certificate," Lucy said with a small smile as she waved a hand in Scully's direction. "Go 'head, Bo, go say hi to the lady."
The dog rose, shook itself, and padded forward, panting. To Mulder it looked like a grey and white mop, although large enough that its back came to the edge of Lucy's chair. "Isn't this the breed of dog they used in the Shaggy Dog movies?" Scully said, the dog's long, fringed tail waving gently as she petted it.
"Yeah, that's one reason why I wanted one," Lucy said, standing. "Hey, weren't ya'll on one of my tours t'other day?"
"Yeah, that's us, Mueller and Sally Fox from Virginia," Mulder introduced them, leaning over and taking a turn at petting the longhaired dog as Scully stood upright again. "You're Lucy, right?"
"Yep, Lucy Burley," she said in her soft singsong accent, smiling at them as Bo turned and padded back to his spot at her feet in the shade and sat, panting lightly. "How long y'all staying? I heard y'all are at the Arms."
"Until next Friday for sure, maybe longer depending on if I can keep work off my back for a few more days," Scully said, and he was relieved to see that she thought to use and remembered the details of their cover story. They hadn't had much chance to use it yet.
"Wow, what do you do for a living?" Lucy asked, standing up and stretching slightly. "You a lawyer or doctor or somethin'?"
"I wish," Scully grinned. "I'm a computer tech, and my handsome husband here is a programmer. That's how we met, at work."
Mulder smiled and put his arm around her, gave her shoulders a squeeze, then began looking over the produce on the table. "Sally and I are city folk, both of us born and raised in cities, so can you tell me what this stuff is?"
Scully none-too-gently poked him in the side with her elbow. "I know what most of this is," she said with fond exasperation. "I do all the cooking, don't I?"
"Hey, I make a mean chili!" he protested. "Okay, then, what's that?" he pointed to a clear plastic bag full of some type of leafy greens.
"Parsley," she retorted, and then pointed to more of the bags lined up along the table. "That's oregano, basil, rosemary, and chives."
"Got some dried hanging up there, too," Lucy pointed up to the bundles of what looked like brown sticks and dried leaves to Mulder.
"I wish we weren't on vacation and I could buy some of your fresh produce," Scully said, slipping out from beneath his arm and wandering along the table. "And these tomatoes! They're Heirloom Beefsteak, am I right?"
Lucy moved over to where Scully was and they began discussing the fruit across the table, leaving Mulder to his own devices. His job was done, he thought, by making the amusing banter that had relaxed the young woman around them. Then he tuned back in when he heard Scully say, "Why isn't your stuff selling? Your table's still mostly full."
He could almost see the shutters come down over her face. "Dunno," she said shortly, moving away from Scully and going back to her chair, lifting the paperback out of it. "Wouldn't mind none if you bought somethin', seeing as how's you've noticed that I ain't selling nothing."
"I'm sorry," Scully said, following along on the other side of the table. "I didn't mean to insult you. I just wondered what was wrong with these people seeing as how you've got the best looking produce in the whole place."
The girl seemed to soften a little. "Don't I know it. I grow everything organic too, jes' like my grammy taught me. I use oil and dishsoap to chase off earwigs and ants, and beer in saucers to catch slugs and tomato bugs," she said. Mulder had no idea what in the hell she was talking about but nodded understandingly anyway. "I been havin' to can most of what I grow cause it ain't selling. Dunno what their damn problem is." The last was said with a sullen glare around the market.
Scully had picked up one of the jars and was looking at it. "'Rosehip jelly,'" she read off the label. "I've never heard of this. What's it taste like?"
"Kinda like grape jelly but with more of a bite, I guess you'd say," the younger woman replied, unable to hide the hopeful look that caused Mulder to feel a pang of sadness for her. She was clearly among the victims in this case, not the bad guy. "It's got grape and apple juice in it, but the rose hips give it a really good, unique flavor."
"I'll get a jar of this, and a bunch of your dried lavender—that'll have my suitcase smelling nice by the time I get home," Scully said, smiling at Lucy as she handed over the small canning jar. "How much?"
Mulder moved away a little bit as Scully paid the girl, pretending to eyeball the display of homemade hard candies at the next booth. When she joined him, he had her pick out a bag of candy, having decided that it might look funny if they only bought something from Lucy's booth, and then urged her out of there.
The drive back to the resort was only five minutes so Mulder headed out of town while sharing his theories. "That girl, and the townspeople, know something is wrong with her," he told his partner as they meandered along a twisting dirt country road. "Why else wouldn't they be buying her stuff? And they must be warning away tourists as well although no one bothered to tell us. We've got to figure out a way to watch her, Scully, and see what's going on."
"I don't see how we can do that, Mulder, without blowing our cover," Scully said, turning slightly in her seat to face him as he turned onto a narrow two-lane paved highway that curved its way around a series of rolling hills. "Unless we make friends with her, or figure out another way to hang out with her. But what in the hell do we have in common with a twenty-year-old country girl?"
"I don't know, but we'll have to find something." His voice trailed off as he looked around. "Hey, Scully, do you have any idea where we are? Cause I don't."