And too empty. Apart from scuff marks on the dirt floor, she saw no evidence of recent activity and nothing on the shelves, though Cabot had walked inside at least twice, leaving caps and probably something else. She panned the room. Whatever he had hidden here, she would find. She would scour every inch of the place, would uncover something that would prove his threat.
She couldn’t see onto the top two shelves, much less reach the narrow highest one. If anything was lying flat up there, she would miss it, unless she climbed the planks. If Cabot returned, he would find her hanging like a monkey. She breathed fast at the danger. What if he trapped her?
Again she checked outside, then dropped to her belly and squinted into the space beneath the bottom shelf, where dusty webs waved like flags when she blew on them. A startled wolf spider the size of a quarter scurried past, and she flinched. Dad said wolf spiders don’t spin. So what species had woven all these webs? Would they bite her?
Not if she was fast. She hesitated, then thrust her hand into the recess and swiped. Nothing there, either. Her eyes lifted to the hundreds of rocks lining the walls. One of them had to be loose. But which one? Where?
Spiders, she quickly realized, helped rather than hindered her search. Where the dusty strands laced over the wall or shelving or formed a filmy barrier between planks, she moved on without lingering. But where the filaments were broken? Clues.
She had inspected halfway up the rear wall when her breath caught. There. Webs had been cleared from a foot-long section partially hidden behind a vertical support post. On the shelf, a chalky grit and some soil particles dotted the dusty surface. And something had rested there, marking the layered deposit.
Bingo.
She fingered the first stone in the web-free opening and tried to jiggle it. It didn’t budge.
But the stone below it did. Tense, she gripped the curve of the softball-shaped river rock and tugged. Powder sifted to the ledge below as she pulled the stone free, exposing an earth-lined cubby. She set the stone on the shelf and sized up the dark opening. What was he hiding in there that would be worth all this effort?
It was empty—at least straight in and to the left. But then she patted around the corner to the right and released the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Yes! She extracted a syringe—like the one she used to squirt water at their rooster when he came after her, only smaller. This one was about the size of her dad’s thumb, with clear liquid in it and something scrawled along its length. She moved to the doorway for light. Ketamine, whatever that was. She set it on the shelf and reached again. Yep. Just as she thought. The baggie she had seen Cabot carry inside, full of cap rolls.
Anything else? This time her fingers ticked a sealed bag of wooden matches like the ones Burnaby carried and a few paper circles like those he tore when he was nervous. These were her brother’s too. What did Cabot want with all this stuff ? Why was he nosing around in her brother’s things? She wanted to jab him with that pitchfork like he had jabbed Pi.
All that remained in the cubby was a small box. Her dirty fingers smudged the lid as she opened it, and her mouth fell open. From Aunt Nora’s dresser! Even in the dimness, she could identify that amber agate. She held it to the light. Recognized the seams arching through it like branches. Aunt Nora would miss it for sure. Aggie and Mama had made the necklace a few years back, for her aunt’s fortieth birthday.
“See, Aggie? Like sunlight on a winter tree. This will be perfect.” Mama had set an agate the size of a robin’s egg in the pooling sunlight. Light bounced in the translucent pebble and caught on the ebony threads tracing through its interior. Her mother stroked the surface, rapt. “Most stones want me to lick ’em—or waves to wash them—before they shine. Not my agates. Give ’em a little sun and they glow from the inside.” Her mother smiled at her. “Like you.”
Aggie held the stone steady while Mama glued a bell cap over its narrow end. The glue dried overnight on the kitchen window ledge before Aggie threaded a skinny rawhide strip through the top of the cap. Mama had knotted the ends together.
Aggie spun the pendant on the dangling hide, aching at the memory—and at the anger she’d aimed at her mother. She held the stone against her cheek, longing to apologize for her sneaky disobedience and her hateful, fire-spreading thoughts. Wishing she could revoke them. Rewind time.
No way Cabot could have this agate. She’d return it to her aunt. For Mama.
Sweat beaded her upper lip as she imagined Cabot opening the empty box, livid that someone had found his cache. Still, she had to take the necklace now, before he could haul it off and steal it from Aunt Nora forever.
She rolled the agate over in her hand, the inner etchings faint in the murky room. Resolutely, she passed the cord over her head and tucked the necklace inside her shirt, patting the small bulge it made near her sternum. She closed the lid, stowed box and bags and syringe into the cubby precisely as before, and slid the river rock back into the wall. The door latch dropped into place behind her as she crept into the sunshine.
All that powdery dust. Those dirty old webs. Aggie’s eyes and nose itched. When rubbing them didn’t help, she made her way to the forest pool, where she dunked her face and blinked underwater. Much better. She stood and shook her head like a puppy, then climbed an access tree.
None too soon. Celia, heavy-footed, sashayed down the trail, lowered her face to the water and drank. As the black-haired girl raised her head, she coughed and touched something in the soft mud.
Oh no oh no oh no. Aggie shrank against the trunk as Celia, crouching low, crawled around the shore until she came to the spot where Aggie had stood. Celia circled the pool, her eyes on the ground. Aggie curled her muddy toes, cringing as Celia returned to the first footprint, inspected it, and sprinted toward the house.
They found me. Aggie dropped to the ground, frantic. At a dead run, she took off in the opposite direction. Leaping, crashing blindly through the brush, she ran until her lungs cried uncle and she bent over, hands on her knees, sucking air, grasping for a plan.
Only one made sense. She had to go back. Return to the pool and confuse Celia. Get rid of the footprints before the girl showed them to others. But how? If she tried to scrape or dig or pound out the prints, they would know. She massaged her temples, thinking. Cover them. I can cover them. She turned and bounded back to the water.
She took too long to find the rock. Too long to carry it and press it over the pair of footprints. Dogs were barking. Coming closer. Hide! Now! The remaining footprint shouted at her, untouched. Her failure nearly collapsed her. But she climbed instead.
A heron balanced on a branch high over the pool as Mender’s pursuing dogs burst through the undergrowth. Mender appeared behind them, ignoring the bird and the dogs leaping for it as she read the mud. She knows! A few more steps and Mender would see the footprint, too.
Then Celia came down the hill with Cabot and caught a dog’s collar. They all hovered over the doughy ground, but Aggie’s footprint was gone, obliterated by the feet of bird-crazy setters.
CHAPTER 28 ~ AGGIE
Lie
Hidden in branches near the pond, Aggie watched Mender trudge up the trail behind the dogs. Celia and Cabot stayed behind, talking. Their words sounded mumbly, and Celia worked her hands as if she was scared. Then Cabot kissed her—ew—and Celia hurried away from him.
Celia should be afraid. Cabot killed things.
As she ran her thumb over Nora’s agate, the murder again consumed her, vivid: the pitchfork’s tines punching into Pi, the dog flailing in the air, that single yelp, over and over. She smelled the blood seeping out of the animal’s slack body, felt the fur Burn’s hands clutched as he held Pi to his chest and ran.
Where had Burnaby taken her?
Pressing tears overpowered her, and she wept for her brother and his little dog. Pi was Burnaby’s best friend in all the world. Now she was dead, too. First Mama and Dad, then Pi. And me—or at least Burn thinks so.
Oh, she wanted
to go to him. Her heart squeezed under her ribs and her core chilled, despite the summer heat. She put her hand under her nostrils and focused on the breath filling her lungs with air, keeping her going.
She pictured Burnaby closing the catechism book during kitchen church, answering for her, reciting from memory there in front of the stove.
“Lord’s Day Nineteen … Second, by his power, he defends us and keeps us safe from all enemies.”
“Dad. He does not.”
“That’s my girl, calling life play-by-play.” Mirth had crinkled her dad’s eyes. “When time makes you more of a historian, you’ll see otherwise. His power all around you, inside you. His safety, right here.” He tapped her temple, then touched the corner of her eye. “Watch for it.”
For Pi, too? She cried harder as she wove her way back to the homestead, pacing loops of sorrow around the pioneer’s chimney, tangles of brush, and old stumps, traipsing on her callused feet through miner’s lettuce, jack-in-the-pulpit and wild bleeding hearts. She tore away handfuls of grass and threw them into the air, keening. When she stubbed her foot on a rock half submerged in the cushiony ground, she hurled it into the undergrowth and wailed.
But instead of a thud when the stone landed, a muffled plunk echoed back. A splash from somewhere deep. She hiccoughed and dropped to her knees, alert. Water? As she crawled to the rock’s landing spot, her arm broke through the ground cover into nothing but air. By reflex, she flung out her other arm and grabbed for a handhold to stop her fall. Her fingers snagged an embedded stone at the hole’s edge, arresting her headfirst plunge into an abandoned well.
She lay there shocked at her discovery, stunned by the close call. Upside down. That’s how she would have landed in this shaft. On her head. She put her hands on either side of the opening. Not quite three feet wide, she figured, and at least deeper than their flagpole. She shuddered. She would feel so … what was the word? … claustrophobic down there. Even if she screamed her loudest, who would hear her? And headfirst? Her nose and mouth would have been underwater. She wouldn’t have screamed at all. She would have drowned.
But she hadn’t.
Safe again. She thought of the cougar. And the maggots.
Her rapid breathing calmed. She sat back to inspect the hole, lined with river rocks. Why did the pioneers even want a stupid well, this close to the river? The reason was probably a hundred years old, like the farm. She tossed in another stone. A splash answered. If she kept her head out of the way, a wiggly reflection of sky and leaves shone at her from the water below.
A weasel popped over a tree root and chucked a warning at her, twitching his black-tipped tail. Aggie wiped her eyes. Okay, little guy. Yes. She would be a weasel now. But not like before. She wasn’t play-acting like a kid anymore. That was baby stuff. This was serious business. Now she needed every ounce of a weasel’s stealth and cunning—and ferocity—to expose Cabot and put a stop to all his meanness. She squared her shoulders and turned toward the dairy.
For the next hour, she hugged a fat limb on the walnut tree between her aunt and uncle’s house and the main barn. The lush leaves hid her well, and she took in a full view of the house’s porch, both doors, the barnyard, and the start of the river trail that led past the homestead. She could watch Cabot’s comings and goings from here. When her brother returned—if he did, after what happened to Pi—she would watch him, too.
She startled at a movement in the kitchen window and sat up. Cabot was in the house again. Her reflex sent some lichen fluttering onto the lawn. Did he see it? No, he was looking down, his curls bobbing under the frilly valance. His head dipped toward the sink as he drank from the faucet. Then the screen door creaked open, and he slid his feet into barn boots on the stair.
Seething, Aggie ran her thumb over her canine teeth and wished they had sharp points. She wanted to jump on him and bury fangs into the back of his neck, like a weasel would do to a rabbit. What did he steal this time?
Cabot was halfway across the barnyard when the Eppings’ brown Buick drove into view. At the car’s appearance, he bent over as if he were picking something up and, still stooping, pivoted direction. Then he stood and strode back toward the porch, as if he were coming to meet them. So they won’t know you were inside. I’m on to you, dog-killer.
When the car rolled to a stop, Cabot opened the door for Aunt Nora and wrested a grocery bag from the back seat. At the kitchen door, her aunt patted his cheek, took the bag from him and carried it inside. Uncle Loomis slanted his hip into the car, crossed his arms, and watched.
“You’re good to us, Cabot. Above and beyond.”
Cabot sauntered back to him, smiling. “No problem.”
Fake. Aggie clenched her jaw.
“I mean it. We’re thankful. What with Nora’s family and the fire and all, we’ve been too preoccupied to pay attention around here like we should.” He cleared his throat.
Cabot shielded his eyes against the sun and fixed them on her uncle. “Speaking of Nora’s family, we had a rough scene here today.”
“Oh?” Uncle Loomis’s inflection rose.
“That dog of Burnaby’s. ’Member how I said she’d growled at me a few times?”
Her uncle nodded and uncrossed his arms. Inclined his head and stepped toward Cabot.
“I was helping Burnaby throw hay to the cows, and the dog attacked me. I lifted the fork to stop her, but she jumped right into it. I feel terrible about it.”
Aggie’s mouth dropped open. Liar!
“She almost knocked both of us off the stack before she went overboard. Hit the concrete hard.”
Uncle Loomis worked his jaw as if chewing his tongue; his forehead wrinkled. “Too bad. That dog’s been Burnaby’s shadow since the kid was little.” His voice sounded like gravel. “Will she make it?”
“Doubtful. I tried to fend her off without hurting her, but the tines caught her pretty hard. Burnaby took off with her, hasn’t come back. Didn’t show for his milking, but I got it done.”
Doubtful? Aggie shifted on the branch, furious. Pi was dead when she hit the ground. You speared her. You wanted her dead!
Uncle Loomis hung his head. Cleared his throat again and ran his hand under his nose. “Sometimes those old cow dogs get too protective for their own good. Start seeing bogeymen.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“These things happen, Cabot. Don’t be too tough on yourself. Sounds like the dog couldn’t be trusted anymore. At least now she won’t bite some unsuspecting visitor.” Uncle Loomis squeezed his shoulder. “Thanks for milking for Burnaby. Poor kid.”
Aggie measured Cabot’s expression but couldn’t gauge him. Obviously, her uncle couldn’t either.
“And there’s more.” Cabot drew something from his pocket and opened his hand. “I’m worried about Burnaby for other reasons, too.”
“What’s this?” Her uncle bent close to some torn red paper in Cabot’s outstretched palm.
“Spent caps. I saw Burnaby in the calf shed near the sawdust pile yesterday. He was pounding these on the concrete with his pocketknife. He even lit a strip on fire and threw it in the shavings. Walked away while it was still burning. I stepped on it, so no harm done, but he could have started something big.” Cabot handed her uncle a charred ribbon of caps. “Why is he doing that?”
Fresh dread descended on Aggie as she stared at the paper in Cabot’s hand. True, Burn fired off cap rolls sometimes, but he would never spark them near a sawdust pile. Or would he, if he really got upset? Or was Cabot making the whole thing up? If not in the calf shed, where else had he seen Burnaby light them?
Worry creased Uncle Loomis’s face. “He lit a lot of caps when he was younger. Nora’s sister said it calmed him down.” He handed the red paper back to Cabot. “His parents spent considerable time teaching him other ways to cope. I never guessed he’d still be setting them off. I’ll talk to him.”
“Just dangerous, is all.” Cabot opened his mouth to say something, then clamped it shut and shoved the ev
idence in his pocket.
“What.”
“Now I’m not accusing him, Loomis, but I heard that the fire at his house may have been intentionally set. Do you think …?” Cabot’s question dangled, unanswered. “I’d hate to see a barn go up in flames or any animals …” He shook his head. “Can’t take those kinds of chances.”
Aggie wanted to jump from the tree and pound on the liar. Tell her uncle what really happened. But Uncle Loomis liked Cabot. He would never believe her.
Loomis muttered something Aggie couldn’t hear, then slapped Cabot’s back. “Maybe I’ll give him a few days off. The boy loved that dog.”
Cabot walked to the milkhouse with his head down. Still, Aggie caught the satisfaction in the rise of his brows and cheeks—and in that forced upward curve of his mouth. Wild-eyed, she leapt from the tree and ran to the woods.
CHAPTER 29 ~ CELIA
Speed
What was I thinking? If a duck had my brains, it would fly north for the winter. Skipping off to Lake Chelan with Cabot would be even worse than flying north. Much worse, considering how he acted at the pond. Sure, I’d still hang out with him until I earned my money, but on my terms. Our cabin would remain unoccupied. How had I been so oblivious? Once again, I’d misjudged a man. First Burnaby. Now, Cabot.
And maybe even my dad? I’d think about that later.
For two days I’d been wondering what Burnaby would say about Cabot. He worked with him, after all. Knew him in a context I didn’t. I checked the barn for Burn repeatedly, but he must have gone to Seattle. Mender said his mom had taken a turn for the worse.
How had I so misinterpreted Cabot? He’d been filling every corner of my life that Gram would allow and had seemed just fine, talking about how he’d own a dairy someday, or what car he’d buy next, or how he wanted to reorganize Loomis’s milking strings. Regular farm guy stuff, I imagined. And he planned to study business part-time at the community college. That would be good for him. Make his conversation more interesting, maybe.
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