How could I tell Burke not to worry about me, to just go—to run into the store and raise the alarm? He was rooted in place, his little chest heaving, his eyes so huge they looked like medallions.
My feet were still free—I could kick. So I did, aiming the rubber heels of my boots where I thought my attacker’s knees would be, pummeling, and letting him hold my body weight.
His only option was to drop me—or to stab me, but the angle was bad if he wanted to avoid accidentally nicking himself. We were all dressed in thick layers of warm clothing, so I willed myself to think of the wool and puffy, quilted down as a shield, and jabbed out my legs one more time after I came down hard on my knees on the pavement. Then I rolled.
I rolled right up against the metal external gate for the enclosure and came to a stop staring up into the boss face from Ms. Oliphant’s sketch. He, too, was growing a beard, but that aquiline nose and ridged brow were similar. The eyes were a dead giveaway—steeled and unrelenting.
He was outside the enclosure, but he held a pair of red-handled bolt cutters. In the fraction of a second it took to inhale a ragged, startled gasp, I wondered if people just drove around with bolt cutters in their trunks. The answer, in Sockeye County, was, unfortunately, yes. Not at all uncommon. Why couldn’t we be normal and conveniently forget all the appropriate tools one might need in an emergency? Isn’t that what AAA is for?
I could hardly fathom the fact that I was analyzing the situation in such depth. But my brain had been blocking some things out, and they now came raring back into focus with piercing clarity along with the pain that seemed to be radiating through my body from my knees upward.
Burke was yelling like a banshee and thrusting the pitchfork at my attacker, making him jig and scrabble over the toppled wheelbarrows while the glass door that led into the store exploded in a shower of splinters.
A tall man with broad shoulders and a raised rifle stepped through the broken door frame at the same time a voice I knew and loved shouted, “Sheriff! Hands up!” from over my shoulder.
I could weep for joy.
The only ones who didn’t comply were Burke and me—well, and Owen because he wasn’t supposed to. He was holding the rifle level and sighting down its length.
I failed to obey because I was already lying down and found that I was suddenly both limp and completely comfortable there on the ground, as if I’d been mashed in place with a steamroller. Also, I could sleep for days—just drop off for the next seventy-two hours or so.
And Burke because he was about to skewer the large man with the pitchfork. He had an expression of such virulent hostility on his small pale face that my breath caught in my throat. No child should ever look like that.
“Burke!” Sheriff Marge snapped. “Back off.”
He did. Not easily, or quickly. But by degrees as the length of steel in his taut little body seemed to dissolve inch by inch until he dropped the pitchfork and crumpled with tears streaming down his face.
I pushed off the ground and lurched at him, scooping him up and swinging him away from the awfulness. I wrapped myself around him as best I could and wept into his shorn hair.
CHAPTER 29
There was a whole lot of hubbub. A whole lot of witnesses who’d seen tiny fragments of the proceedings and were anxious to give their statements. The arrests were most definitely a community affair.
Sheriff Marge had gotten three calls, one right after the other, just a few minutes after Burke and I had entered the store—two from customers in the parking lot about a suspicious truck stopped, but idling, around the back of the store behind the garden center enclosure, and one from a cashier who’d spotted the larger man, Dr. Herren, stride inside and then pause to carefully survey the entire store over the tops of the displays and endcaps. He’d been noticeable because all the local residents know exactly where the supplies they want are shelved; they don’t need to read the hanging signs.
Deputy Dale Larsen had been our tailing protector from the Imogene into the town of Lupine, where he’d handed off responsibility to Deputy Archie Lanphier who was driving a borrowed Jeep Cherokee. Unbeknownst to me, Archie had entered the store just behind us, and he’d been feigning interest in the kitchen organizer section one aisle over while Burke and I drooled over the candy.
He’d been waylaid by a conversation. Just one of those polite, neighborly inquiries about life in general that he hadn’t been able to get out of for about five minutes. Most of the townspeople knew that Sheriff Marge and her deputies were hunting a pair of murderers, but that didn’t mean they were going to stop caring about the well-being of their friends, even if that friend was a deputy. And Archie had looked like he wasn’t on duty, given his jeans and sheepskin coat and scuffed cowboy boots. Shopping on a Friday afternoon at the local everything store is the equivalent of social hour, and opportunities to catch up with acquaintances are not to be missed.
Archie hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself by being rude to the little old lady, and he’d seen us go into the garden center, which he knew would be empty in January. But he hadn’t noticed the man with the new-growth beard following us until he realized the door into the garden center was barred on the outside with a couple long pieces of top rail for chain link fencing that had been wedged across from the racking on either side of the door.
Deputy Owen Hobart, on his way back from his out-of-town trip, had sped into the parking lot a moment later, and he’d taken up surveillance just inside the garden center door while Archie hustled all the customers and staff into the safety of the rear stockrooms.
Because that garden center? It would’ve been like shooting fish in a barrel. Again.
“They wouldn’t have been able to escape if they’d shot you,” Sheriff Marge reassured me, hours later. “Too noisy. Unless they’d used a silencer.” She shrugged. “Which they didn’t have. One gun between them—found it under the back seat in the cab—and it hasn’t been fired in a while. Nope, they needed to keep their”—she paused, winced—“removal of Burke quiet, for a number of reasons. They still believed they could get away with it.”
“In broad daylight, with so many people around?” I croaked. Our close call still hadn’t fully sunk in. I was pretty sure I was going to get the shakes later, probably in the middle of the night, when the gravity of what might have been finally did pierce my thick subconscious.
Pete hadn’t stopped touching me since he’d raced in from the port—Ralph had sheltered behind the pharmacy counter and called him during the scramble to shove customers to safety—and his arm was around my waist as we leaned against the bumper of our pickup in the nearly deserted parking lot. Burke was up in the bed of the truck with an extra blanket draped over his shoulders and Tuppence flopped across his lap. He probably couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to, but we were grateful and determined to keep him close. He was also listening to every word of our conversation, but there was no reason to pussyfoot around the situation, now that it was over.
“They were desperate,” Sheriff Marge said grimly. “I haven’t gotten the full story yet, but it’s something about a genetically modified seed mix-up at their lab. Truitt’s blaming Herren, and Herren’s not talking.”
“But Truitt’s the boss?” I muttered. “He should know?”
“Exactly. He’s culpable, both for the lab snafu, and especially for the murder, attempted kidnapping, attempted murder, vehicle thefts, what have you…” Her words trailed off at the litany of crimes. She went to lift her hat, realized it wasn’t perched on top of her head since she was in plainclothes, and readjusted her reading glasses instead. “The thing that worries me most…now,” she added with a quick glare at me, “is that whatever happened at the lab was bad enough they thought it was worth murdering Cassidy over when they realized she’d collected the data that would reveal their error.”
“Did they tell you where her equipment is?” Pete asked. “Any film footage from the drone?”
Sheriff Marge shook her hea
d. “Truitt says Herren destroyed it. Herren says there never was any. If they don’t cooperate, we’re going to have to seize everything in that lab and sort through the data until we find whatever the secret is.” She heaved a sigh. “And we’re not scientists. It could take months—we’d have to call in outside experts. Expensive outside experts.”
Owen had joined our group, a couple small butterfly bandages on his chin and left hand, covering the cuts he’d received from the flying glass when he’d smashed the door. He looked older, wearier, all of a sudden, and it struck me how much of Sheriff Marge’s demeanor had rubbed off on him. I didn’t know where he’d been, just that he’d been gone for a few days and out of the rotation of our protective detail.
He hitched a thumb into the front pocket of his jeans and said, “The staff at the lab will help, I’m pretty sure of it. Truitt and Herren weren’t managing the lab in a way that promoted morale. People will talk.”
“In that case,” Sheriff Marge reached up to clap him on the shoulder, “come along. We’ll have another go at them in the interview room. You should take the lead this time.”
oOo
It took a week, but Sheriff Marge and Owen got the corroboration they needed to piece together the motive behind Gordon Truitt’s and Russ Herren’s brutality.
The receptionist at Truitt BotoTechnologies was a font of information, especially when Owen, in all his handsomeness, turned up to interview her in person. She’d known Cassidy, just at a passing acquaintance level, had seen her around the facilities a couple times wearing a visitor’s pass, and had known of her research project and her love for the outdoors and for backwoods hiking. It hadn’t seemed at all unusual to her that Cassidy would agree to join the two head scientists for a weekend’s adventuring. But that had been weeks before anyone realized Cassidy was missing—she hadn’t correlated the disparate events until Owen started asking pointed questions.
Russ Herren had stolen the pickup for that subterfuge, and both men had groomed Cassidy into believing they were all heading out to a base camp to meet up with a small group of hikers and a guide.
But, obviously, they’d driven her deep into the forest instead, to a spot they deemed appropriate for dumping her body, keeping up the charade until they’d reached their destination so there would be no blood or signs of a struggle left inside the vehicle should it ever be found after they ditched it.
Sheriff Marge was resting with her hip against the counter in the Imogene’s kitchen as she filled me in, looking for all the world like her usual, stoutly healthy self with only the one new anomaly of an herbal tea bag tag dangling from the large insulated travel mug she held. Starched khaki suited her.
Burke was at his first day of school, and I had the closed-on-Monday museum to myself. I was putting the finishing touches on the new exhibit and had invited Sheriff Marge to have the opportunity for an honorary walk-through before it opened to the public.
“And the seed swap, what happened?” I asked.
“The point of no return was actually two summers ago, when Russ Herren accidentally sent the genetic details for the wrong seed strain to SeedGenix—one that hadn’t yet received U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval and that the lab was engineering for a different seed company. SeedGenix developed it into a seed crop last year, and that’s what they sold to all the region’s farmers this summer. One mix-up in the lab, and we now have millions of acres planted with a wheat strain that no one’s actually tested in the real world yet.”
“Except, they are now, by default,” I murmured.
“Exactly. And that’s what Cassidy found. A crop that’s performing abnormally well. Insane growth rates, even through the winter months. No seed head formation yet, so the jury’s still out on production levels. Her data made Russ Herren go back and check his records, and that’s when they realized their mistake.”
“Truitt knew about it?”
“After the fact, but yes. Impossible for him not to know about it. But he found out in time to limit the damage—from his perspective. He was hoping to eliminate the source of the revealing information, and therefore the information itself. Better to let the farmers think they were just having a bumper year for reasons that had nothing to do with this particular form of genetic development.”
“And save his own professional hide.”
Sheriff Marge nodded. “That too. The scale of these operations magnifies mistakes. He would’ve been—is—utterly ruined, professionally, financially. He would’ve lost everything. But in killing Cassidy, he turned a relatively honest mistake into something even more devastating for himself, and for Herren.” Sheriff Marge twirled the tea tag between her thick fingers. “Cover-ups never work, not in the long run.”
But my mind was stuck on the closely intertwined economy of the region. “The farmers have all planted a crop they can’t sell. This is going to ruin everyone.” I could barely squeeze out the words. The breadth of this coming catastrophe was overwhelming.
Sheriff Marge tipped her head, her brow furrowed. “I doubt it. The FDA is holding a series of emergency meetings. They’ll approve this strain, no question about it. They have to. Seed technology is one of the industries that’s too big to fail, too deeply integrated into the fabric of our national economy. So they’ll approve it quietly, and hopefully by harvest no one will remember the questionable origin of nearly thirty percent of the nation’s wheat crop. If they do it soon, exports will most likely carry on as normal.”
“Is there anything really wrong with this new unapproved wheat strain? Maybe it’s safe?” I suggested hopefully. We’d all be eating the breads and cereals and prepackaged goods made from it come next winter, so I surely hoped so.
But Sheriff Marge just shrugged, in a weary sign of resignation. “Honestly? Probably no more or less than any other wheat currently growing in this country.” She swept off her hat, revealing her short, salt-and-pepper tufted thatch of hair. “Give me some good news,” she said. “How’s Burke?”
“Nervous as all get out this morning. Hardly ate anything, so I packed him an extra big lunch. But I think he’s excited about school, too.” I grinned at the memory of him dashing through his new list of chores, which included feeding Tuppence and sweeping out the mud room on the back porch, his stubbly hair parted neatly and his mineral-green eyes huge as always. He’d been wearing the new clothes he and I had picked out—ones that fit him properly. “Just, you know, the jitters. He hasn’t been with kids his own age in several years.”
“You should frame that flattened cardboard you and Burke escaped on.” Sheriff Marge clucked and shook her head. “Ingenious. Tell that kid I want him to be a deputy when he grows up.”
“Too late—about the cardboard, not the kid.” I chuckled. “Pete already used the cardboard as a backdrop when he spray-painted a wooden chair to match Burke’s desk.”
“Settling in, is he?”
“I think so,” I noted hopefully. “He needed a quiet place where he could do his homework. I want him to feel like that bedroom is all his, a place where he’s safe, where he can think and read and daydream. Where he can be a kid again.”
“I meant Pete.” Sheriff Marge was giving me an appraising glare over the top of her reading glasses.
“Settling in?” I repeated, thoroughly confused.
“To the idea of fatherhood.”
“Oh.” I flapped a hand dismissively. “That was never an issue.” Definitely not. Pete has a far better handle on what parenting really looks like on a daily basis than I do.
“Good. Then you two can get to work on making a baby sister for Burke.”
I blinked. And then scowled at her. Burke’s offhand, second-rate suggestion had been spoken in the close confines of our kitchen at home. Not public knowledge.
But meddling is the sheriff’s—and every other county resident’s—natural pastime, and she just leveled that gray gaze back at me with a gleeful smirk and answered—sort of—my unspoken question. “I have my sources.”
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NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m a firm believer that all good stories are both mysteries and romances at their core. There’s always a question that needs to be answered (mystery), and there are always relationships that are integral to the plot (romance, although not always of the two-consenting-adults variety—maybe this concept is better classified as love, or even conflict…and often both at the same time).
Sometimes, however, I think the most important romance occurs between the reader and the characters on the pages. I know I have that relationship with all my favorite books.
So I’ve wanted to write another Imogene Museum mystery for a long time, mainly because I also believe that happily-ever-afters aren’t wrapped up and tied with a guaranteed bow at the wedding. They take a lot of hard work and faith, but the good knots should go on for the next forty or sixty or eighty years in spite of mysteries and conflict and travails. (Shout out to my parents right here—they’re rapidly advancing on the big 50 themselves. We’ve been threatening them with a monster bash. They are not amused. Did I mention I might’ve been part of those travails as a youngster? Also as an oldster?)
Thanks again, as always, to Debra Biaggi who toted this manuscript around with her through a very busy life in order to read it and provide invaluable feedback. She also tells me funny stories. I think I both laugh and cry in her presence (for only the best reasons) more than I do with any other person. What a treasure.
Also again, as always, I claim all errors, whether accidental or intentional, solely as my own. You may have noticed I did some more, rather extensive, scootching around of geography again, since the pursuit of justice generally requires travel out here in the wild lands of eastern Washington and eastern Oregon, but a lot of that travel is across high-plateau flat stuff that would bore you if it took more than a paragraph or so in the text. (Far, far better if you have the opportunity to see that magnificent expanse in person!)
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