Miranda unlocked the door and let in a tawny flash of energy that wore thick black glasses and spoke at the speed of light. “Miranda? Great, thanks for agreeing to collaborate with me on this.” She looked around and took one end of the couch and pulled a smartphone out of a well-worn black leather Kate Spade tote.
“You don’t mind if I record this interview, do you?” said Tyler. “See, here’s the app that records everything.” Tyler showed it to her after she pointed it at her. “I also take a picture to help me remember who you are. Don’t worry, you look gorgeous.” After she put the phone on the couch, she motioned for Miranda to sit at the other end. “I hope I can get it all done so that it will run as the lead for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” said Miranda as she plopped down on the couch and looked at her watch. “How?”
“My editor is holding the front page for me.”
“Oh.”
“Above the fold.”
“Oh.” Miranda’s heart skipped. Was this the right thing to do? Yes. It was right for Mrs. Childers.
“First, can you spell out your full name slowly and clearly?”
Miranda spelled out, “M-i-r-a-n-d-a D-o-r-o-t-h-y T-r-e-n-t.”
“Perfect. This is Tyler Morgan recording this interview from the Buchanan Farmhouse in Pine Ridge, a small unincorporated community along Route 15 just northwest of the city of Campton, the county seat of Wolfe County.” She looked at her watch. “The time is eight p.m. Now, Miranda, in your own words, would you please describe what happened yesterday during your cultural adventure, the Paint & Shine tour?”
Chapter 19
Monday Morning
A few minutes after eight o’clock, Miranda heard the deep frequency of an industrial engine. She hoped that it belonged to one of the gigantic telephone installation trucks. She continued to hear it long before she saw it.
As she looked through her bedroom window across the field, the truck came into view with a bucket crane mounted on the top and the telephone company’s logo plastered all over the cab.
She took her mug of hot coffee out on the front porch and waited. The gigantic truck slowly made its way up the dirt road. It parked directly in front of the telephone pole on the side of the road straight across from her driveway.
Lucky that I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I’m completely blocked in.
Two weeks ago, she had gone over to Jackson to the nearest Walmart and purchased a telephone base with three handsets. It seemed excessive for a woman living alone to have three, but one would be in the kitchen, one in her bedroom, and the remaining handset could be down in the barn for use when her micro distillery was operational.
When she first moved into the farmhouse, she hadn’t considered that getting it hooked up would be anything more than a routine call to the local phone company to switch it on electronically.
Unfortunately, it had taken a long time to get approval through the only service provider to run the wire from the telephone pole to the farmhouse for a land line. She wasn’t sure if it was a political problem due to the local resistance to her new distillery or, it was just possible, that it always took a long time to add a new customer.
One of her uncle’s infuriating quirks was that he had an unreasonable desire for extreme privacy. She hadn’t yet figured out why he felt that way. Was it something that happened to him as a child? Could it be a phobia against strangers? She didn’t know and her mother wouldn’t talk about it. As a result, he didn’t have a phone, cell phone, computer, or television.
She thought the isolation was magic as a child when she was staying for the summer. All her city friends were away at camp or on nice vacations. Going to a farmhouse seemed exotic to her friends.
When folks needed to contact her uncle, they either stopped by to see him or they sent him a postcard, or, in dire cases, a telegram.
She desperately needed modern high-speed internet connectivity services to run her business. She also wanted it to support a decent lifestyle, but it had been a challenge. The phone company explained to her that a brand-new line would have to be installed from the telephone pole to the farmhouse.
A large, short, heavyset man in flannel shirt and clean bib overalls climbed down from the cab and walked up to the porch. He had a clipboard. “Good morning, young lady. Is your daddy at home?”
Miranda rolled her eyes; it was not the first time that she had been mistaken for a youngster. She was standing there in a T-shirt, holding a puppy, her hair quickly pulled into a ponytail, and she wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup. “Sir, I own this place.”
He checked his clipboard. “Is this the Buchanan Farm?”
“Yes. I’m the new owner, Miranda Trent. I’m so happy to see you. There’s no cell service out here at all. I really need my telephone line.”
He handed her the clipboard. “I need your signature there at the bottom before I can start work.”
Miranda scanned the work authorization form and signed it at the bottom. She handed it back.
“Yep, we’ve been wondering down at the office just how long this farmhouse could stay off the grid. Did you get running water? I hear the old man had electricity, but nothing else.”
“I’m hooked up to city water now. I even installed a modern bathroom. I don’t have a furnace yet, but I’m desperate for modern connectivity.”
“What about cable? It doesn’t come out this far, does it?”
Miranda shook her head. “Not yet. Apparently, the folks who live along this road haven’t been interested, so the cable company passed it over. That’s my next big challenge.”
“That’s gonna take some work. That cable company isn’t interested in serving the public. They only want to make money. That’s the way things work out here.”
“I know, but they also appreciate a well-researched business case, so that’s what I’m working on. I’ve got signatures from over half the residents along this road, but I think I need to get at least seventy-five percent of them willing to sign up.”
“Hm. Wouldn’t want to tackle that, miss. I’m going to tap on in to the phone wire from this pole, then I’ll need to run it over to the house. I usually install it onto the highest peak facing the road.” He pointed to the window of her second story. “That would be the best place. There would be a little protection from your roof. Then I could run the wire down from the attic into the front room. Is that okay?”
“Then I hook up my base unit there?”
“Yep.” He looked down at the ground in front of the porch and kicked up a little puff of dirt. “I’ll have to bring my bucket truck up to about here in the front yard. It may leave some tracks.”
“No problem. It hasn’t rained in a while, so the ground is pretty firm.”
“If you could move your van back towards the barn, that’ll give me plenty of room to maneuver.”
“Sure thing, it’ll just take me a minute.”
“I’ll just get on with the pole upgrade, then.” He climbed into the cab of the bucket truck, stowed the clipboard, and powered up the stabilizing legs of the truck to extend out to each side. The road was now fully blocked.
Miranda went back into the house, drained the rest of her coffee, put the cup in the kitchen sink, and then tucked Sandy into his cage. She moved her van and then, going back to the porch, she heard Sandy yipping from his cage. Miranda went back, put him on leash, and walked him around to the back of the house. The whirring noise of the truck hydraulics had Sandy too distracted to perform his business. She gave up and took him back into the house. She fed him breakfast in the kitchen, then put him on leash again to watch the telephone installer work on the pole.
At that moment, Austin’s truck came barreling down the road and skidded to a dusty stop right behind the bucket truck. He leaned out the window and yelled up to the installer. “Hey! You can’t block the whole road.
The installer yelled down from the bucket. “I’m sorry young fellow, but there’s no other safe place for me to work on th
is pole. This monster truck weighs more than thirty tons. I can’t just park it willy-nilly.”
Austin got out of his truck. “How long are you gonna be?”
“Probably no more than an hour or two. I don’t know what I’m up against. You’ll have to go around.”
Miranda tied Sandy’s leash to the heavy bench on the porch. “Sorry, Austin,” she said as she walked down her driveway. “Can you drive around?”
Austin put his hands on his hips. “Not the way this is blocked. I can get my truck up through your front yard, but there’s a three-foot drop back down to the road. I’ll have to go around by the back way.”
“What back way?”
Austin tilted his head. “You know, the track that follows the creek.”
Miranda still had a puzzled look on her face. “What creek?”
“Okay, it’s barely a trickle, but it runs past the road that goes up to the Adams Cemetery, then it follows up the next ravine and on out to that road across this valley.” He pointed to the Adams’s farmhouse.
“I didn’t know about that one. Uncle Gene told me to stay away from that creek. He said there were snakes.”
Austin nodded. “That’s true. The brush down there is hardly ever cleared so it’s a haven for rattlesnakes to birth their young.”
“Really?”
“Really. There’s a story from a ranger in the fifties who came across a six-year-old boy fishing along the widest part of the little creek. It was probably only two foot across. The boy was hollering ‘Ow, ow, ow,’ so the ranger squatted down next to him and asked him what was wrong.
“The boy said that the worms he found were mean and wouldn’t get on the hook. The ranger looked at the so-called worms the boy had captured in a jelly jar with tiny holes punched in the lid. The jar was full of baby rattlers and his hands were bitten raw from trying to use them as bait.”
Miranda covered her face with both hands. “Oh no. Did he live?”
“The ranger grabbed the kid and drove like a maniac to the doctor’s office in Campton. The doctor tried everything, but the boy died the next day.”
Feeling a shudder travel up across her shoulders, she said, “That’s awful. I’ll have to watch that Sandy doesn’t get loose that way.”
It had been awfully quiet up in the bucket and then they heard the lineman curse in a full and expansive stream of frustration “Hey down there! I’ll be gone and out of here in just a couple of minutes.” He proceeded to lower the bucket. Austin and Miranda waited while he stepped down into the road.
“I don’t have the right part to connect to this ancient pole.”
“What?” Miranda huffed her frustration. “You didn’t bring the right connector?”
The installer shook his head. “I put the right connector in the bucket myself. I knew this line out here would need one of the old-timey connectors.”
Miranda frowned. “But you say it’s gone from the bucket?”
“I don’t understand it. Who would want one? These old connectors were supposed to be phased out years ago. I’m going to have to replace everything and I don’t have enough parts. I’ll have to come back when we get them from the main supply office.”
Miranda and Austin watched as the installer raised the stabilizer legs, backed the bucket truck into the farmhouse driveway, then trundled down the road.
“Back to the turnout to call for yet another appointment.” Miranda pressed her lips together to keep from cursing like the installer.
Chapter 20
Monday Morning, Hemlock Lodge
Miranda was once more pacing at Hemlock Lodge, this time in the hallway in front of Doris Ann’s vacant reception desk. A sign was displayed to indicate that guests should contact the dining room staff. Of course, Doris Ann didn’t work on Sundays or Mondays, but shouldn’t someone be at the desk in her place? After all, this was the prime week of leaf-peeping season.
The sign-up list on the Paint & Shine website had shown her that four clients had paid for a cultural adventure this beautiful Monday morning. It was now fifteen minutes past the official starting time and not one person had arrived.
This is going to be a failure. I’m doomed.
She went outside and searched the entire perimeter of Hemlock Lodge to make doubly certain that her group hadn’t gathered at the trail head or maybe at the far end of the parking lot. She returned to the lobby to check into her website with her phone. All had canceled and their refunds had been processed. At least she kept the small termination fee.
Then she poked her head into the gift shop to speak to the cashier. “I’m going to leave now. None of my clients showed up. Hopefully, they just got their days mixed up.”
The cashier looked at Miranda. “Oh, wait, I know you. You’re the one on the front page of the paper.”
“What?”
The cashier pointed to a stack of the Lexington Herald-Leader newspapers on her checkout counter. “Yeah, see. Right here. That’s you on the front page, isn’t it?”
Miranda saw her image staring back at her. It was the phone picture that Tyler Morgan had snapped of her face last night to identify the recording. That’s what she had claimed. Tyler had out-and-out lied. There was a perfectly good publicity photo on her website.
The headline across the top screamed out in monster-sized type: “Did Tour Guide Murder Her Cook?” Miranda felt the bottom of her stomach fall into a sour pit of gloom. She swallowed quickly to hold back the bile that appeared at the back of her throat. She felt the room begin to spin.
“Are you all right, miss?” The clerk scurried around from behind the counter and grabbed Miranda around her shoulders. “You need to sit down and gather yourself together.” The kind clerk led her to a bench right outside the gift store.
Miranda sat down and realized that she still held the newspaper. She reached for her billfold.
“No, don’t bother with that right now, sweetie. Pay me later. I’m going to grab you a bottle of cold water from the fridge. You stay right there.” The clerk dashed back into her shop.
Miranda leaned against the back of the bench and took in a few slow, deep breaths. The sensational headline explained why she had no clients this morning. She was definitely in trouble now.
The clerk returned, and Miranda drank down half the bottle. “Thanks so much.”
“What’s wrong, miss?” said the clerk.
Miranda pointed to her picture. “I wasn’t expecting this.” She sat on the bench until all dizziness had gone. She thanked the clerk for helping her, then paid for the paper and water. She left a message for Dan. Then she notified both the sisters by text that they wouldn’t be serving a meal at the farmhouse today.
I’m furious with Tyler. She seemed so genuine. Have I lost my ability to judge character? Disgusting! What a betrayal.
By the time she arrived back at the farmhouse, she was calm, but keenly aware of what this situation would do to her new life if it wasn’t resolved quickly. After taking Sandy for a walk, Miranda took out her murder notebook and flipped to the list of people who were at the farmhouse the day Mrs. Childers died.
She looked at the list of names in the front to determine if any others could be eliminated. She had already removed Austin, but who else?
Nothing jumped out at her, so she started with the first name on the list, Mrs. Viola Hobb. She would start there. She flipped to Mrs. Hobb’s page in her murder notebook and drew in more detail to the portrait sketch.
I’m doing nothing here but lollygagging. I need to start seriously investigating. Get up and get on with it.
She looked at the address she had written down for Mrs. Hobb. It was in Campton on the main street that ran through the middle of the downtown area and back out through the east end of town. It was within easy walking distance of the courthouse.
Miranda gathered up her phone and Sandy to make a call from her cell phone spot, but then grabbed her car keys as well. She was almost to the car before she turned back into the house and wrap
ped a portion of the Dutch apple cobbler to take to Mrs. Hobb. In this part of the country, it was bad manners when visiting the ill to show up without a dish of food, or flowers, or a gift of some sort. At the last second, she scooped up her murder notebook.
Mrs. Hobb was certain to be home. Miranda knew from chatting with the sisters that it appeared that Mrs. Hobb was very likely to take full advantage of any ailment by letting neighbors, friends, and relations cater to her every whim while she was feeling poorly.
Miranda planned to use this visit as the excuse for a very long chat. There was a wealth of history in that memory and she needed to extract some background. She drove to Campton by way of “old 15,” as folks called the state road that predated the highway. She would arrive in less than fifteen minutes.
As Miranda expected, Mrs. Hobb was holding court with a visitor on the wide porch that completely covered the length of one side of her house. It was an impeccably tidy little white cottage with black shutters and traditional gray paint on the porch boards. Miranda pulled up into the driveway and before she could get out of the car, the neighbor hustled down the steps to the sidewalk waving a cheery “ ’Bye.”
“Hi, Miranda,” said Mrs. Hobb, resting on the wooden porch swing that hung from the far side of the porch. There was a box of candy beside her that must have been the neighbor’s offering. “How sweet of you to stop by to see how I’m doing. I enjoyed the venison stew the girls brought me.”
Miranda clipped Sandy’s lead to his harness, grabbed the wrapped dish, and made her way up onto the cozy porch. “They’re great cooks. Sadly, I never got a chance to taste the batch that Mrs. Childers made. Austin and I threw everything out when we were cleaning the kitchen.” She shuddered at the vision of Mrs. Childers lying on the floor.
Mrs. Hobb sucked in a breath through her teeth. “It’s a downright shame about all that wasted food.”
“Couldn’t be helped. Just the thought of it gives me shivers. Anyway, I’ve brought you some dessert. I have plenty since my tour group canceled today.”
Still Knife Painting Page 13
