Seeds of Trust

by Cynthia Reese

  “I don’t rightly recall. You know men when they don’t like their names—they don’t like sharing. So what’s your plan for the rest of the afternoon? Ryan asked me to see if you needed to talk to him some more today.”

  Becca registered Mee-Maw’s evasiveness and made a mental note to contact Charlotte to see if she knew J.T.’s full name. If Mee-Maw was hiding something—and her cagey answers certainly made it appear that way—Becca didn’t want to tip her hand now.

  “No, I won’t bother Ryan, not today at any rate. I think I’ll make a quick tour of the various farms that are affected by this vine.”

  “Won’t get that done today. Most every farmer in this area has got it, to hear Ryan talk. Not just in this county, but the next one, too.”

  “Well, I can start on it. I need to see them, you know? With my own eyes.”

  Mee-Maw nodded. “Yup. I’m like that, too. But—maybe I’m out of line—I just want you to know, Ryan’s sure counting on that insurance settlement. He really doesn’t think we’re going to be able to harvest the cotton this year. At least not the cotton in the front field.”

  Becca covered Mee-Maw’s veined hand with her own. “I’ll do my best, but I won’t lie. I’ve got a lot of questions that need answers.”

  “Well, then. Leave the dishes and you get on to answerin’ them questions of yours.”

  * * *

  TWILIGHT DEEPENED as Becca pulled out of the drive-through of the local burger joint, her cholesterol-laden supper in a sack.

  The hamburger would be a far cry from Mee-Maw’s cooking. Becca was alarmed to find she missed the company that both Mee-Maw and Ryan offered.

  Enough. You need to stay objective. You’re already coming up with major conspiracy theories to figure out a way Ryan could be uninvolved.

  Everything she’d seen today on the two farms she’d gotten to fed those conspiracy theories.

  For instance, the stories were just too similar, too pat. How could farmers just walk out one bright morning and suddenly find a weird, exotic vine choking the life out of their cotton? Hadn’t they been looking for signs of infestation once the news of its appearance had spread?

  Also, the spread pattern just didn’t make sense. True, life was stranger than fiction, but she needed to check with some experts to see if there was any way the dodder could have disseminated in the way she’d seen.

  Becca yawned as she parked her car and retrieved file folders, her camera bag and her hamburger. She’d eat her dinner, take a shower to rinse off the dust she was covered in and then try to get some work—

  She stopped abruptly as she rounded the front of the car.

  There, hanging from the doorknob to her motel room, like a vile do-not-disturb placard, was a length of dodder vine.

  Fashioned in a hangman’s noose.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BECCA FROZE AND stared at the hangman’s noose for a long moment. It swayed slightly, though Becca couldn’t detect much of a breeze.

  The observation kick-started her into action. She backpedaled her way to the car quickly. Inside, she hit the door’s auto-lock button. With fingers that trembled more than she liked, she fumbled for her cell phone.

  Did this county have 9-1-1 service from cell phones? A lot of rural counties didn’t, and she couldn’t remember Rooster/Ryan ever remarking on it. Her brain frothed until she allowed it a moment to digest on what it wanted to.

  Who put that thing there? Who did she rile so much that they’d want to warn her off? When did they put it there? Just now? How’d they know which room was hers? She needed to get a photo of it, needed to get a police incident report done.

  Her cell phone buzzed in her hand. She looked down at it, a shiver of paranoia running through her. The number was a local one. Could the call be related to the threat?

  Becca answered it with a hesitant “Hello?”

  “Becca? I’m sorry to call you so late, but—”

  At the sound of his voice, she relaxed. “Ryan!”

  “Wow. You sound glad to hear from me. Lonely?”

  “No. Uh…a bit, um…” She gazed at the noose, just making out a hint of the vine in the dimness. “Someone graced my motel-room door with a dodder vine—in the shape of a hangman’s noose.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In my car. About to call 9-1-1 to get a patrol car here. I just found it.”

  “You’re staying at the motel here in town, right? I’ll be right there. Sit tight.”

  He hung up before pride made her protest that she didn’t need rescuing. She could sure use the company, though.

  She dialed 9-1-1 and got the wireless provider to patch her through to the local sheriff’s department. Becca was requesting a patrol car when she saw headlights pull up behind her.

  Squinting, she made out Ryan’s old truck. He was tapping on her passenger-door window a minute or so later.

  She hit the unlock button. Ryan swung open the door and proceeded to try to fold himself into the little car.

  “This thing’s a torture device for guys my height,” he said, bumping his head. “Sure you don’t want to wait in my truck?”

  “You’re almost in now. It would be a lot of agony to get yourself out. Don’t you need a break first?” she teased.

  He managed to slide the seat all the way back and arrange himself. Becca hit the lock button again. For a moment, they sat in silence.

  “Someone put a dodder vine on your door?”

  She flicked the headlights to augment the dim, flickering fluorescent lighting that ran along the front of the motel-room doors.

  Ryan shouted when he saw the hangman’s noose.

  Darkness settled after Becca switched off the headlights. “Was this what the farmers were planning at that meeting this morning?”

  “No! Well…”

  Becca glanced at him sharply. “Well, what?”

  Ryan scowled, his mouth tight. “Murphy—and everybody else—wanted you out of here as quick as possible. They know they won’t get any settlement until your investigation is through.”

  “This is the way to make me think the dodder vine is some freak accident of nature and tell Ag-Sure to start cutting the checks?” Becca didn’t bother to hide her sarcasm. “Sorry. Threats usually tell me the opposite.”

  “They— Murphy’s too smart for this. He would have never done it. Who else did you see today?”

  “A guy named Tate. And another farmer called Oliver.”

  “Either Doug Oliver or Stephen Tate would have been hotheaded enough to do something like this. Or…”

  “Yes?”

  “It could have been any of those guys there this morning. Except me and Jack, of course.”

  She gave him a wry smile while she decided whether Jack should be excluded from the list. He’d been at the meeting, and he appeared more comfortable with those men than Ryan had. But to Ryan, she said only, “Of course. Guess it comes down to means. Who knew which room was mine?” she mused.

  Ryan’s chuckle was a grim one. “In this town? That wouldn’t have been hard to find out at all.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? It just tells me that I’ve probed a tender spot.”

  He sighed at her words. “Maybe…maybe they were just trying to say… Oh, I don’t know, that the dodder vine was strangling all of us.”

  “What?” She stared at him in amazement. “Yo
u don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “No, but what guy wants to believe that the people he knows are willing to scare a woman?”

  “I’m beginning to think the people you know—at least some of them—are crooks. Just how long does it take for the sheriff’s department to respond, anyway? I called them right after I got off the phone with you, and you had to drive all the way into town.”

  “They have only one car on patrol at night and it sticks to the interstate. If you called them after I called you, it shouldn’t be too much longer. What do you think they can do about this anyway?”

  “Make a report, at the very least. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not expecting a CSI-type response, but it’s standard operating procedure. When you get a threat in the field, you report it. The report then becomes part of the evidence.” Becca rummaged in the fast-food sack and hauled out the now-cold hamburger. She took a bite of it, frowning.

  “This tastes like a brick. Are they any better when they’re hot?”

  “Not much. Only a desperate person would eat that. Why didn’t you come back out for supper? Mee-Maw had plenty. I was…a little disappointed that you didn’t show up.”

  Her heart warmed at his words. Disappointed? Did that mean he’d missed her? Becca hid her smile. “You must be the only farmer in this county who actually wants to see me, then.”

  “We, uh, we just got off to a bad start, you and me. Call me crazy, but…it’s like I know you. It’s like, I don’t know, maybe we’ve met before. But I know we haven’t because I sure wouldn’t forget a woman like you.”

  You do know me. “Ryan, I, uh, I think you—” She started to spill the fact that she was Sunny and she had a feeling he was Rooster, but more headlights flashed in her rearview mirror and lit the bank of motel-room doors.

  “That’ll be the sheriff’s deputy. Let me go talk to him.” Ryan bailed out of the car as if it was on fire. Was he running from the intimacy of the previous moment, or did he want to say something in private to the deputy?

  She joined him on the pitted pavement in time for her to hear his greeting to the deputy. Ryan grinned in her direction and when she came to stand beside Ryan, his arm went around her in a comforting way.

  “This is Becca Reynolds. She’s down here to see about that dodder vine we have in our cotton. She, um, got a nasty welcome tonight.”

  The deputy, about Ryan’s age and just as tall, turned to Becca. He held out his hand. “Deputy Brandon Wilkes, ma’am. What seems to be the problem?”

  She showed him the vine and was glad to see the deputy look taken aback at the hangman’s noose. He asked her to open the door with her key.

  Inside, nothing looked disturbed. The bedside lamp cast a pool of yellow light over the room. Housekeeping had made the bed. Becca’s suitcase sat at the end of the spare double bed, and the room appeared its depressing, dank self.

  They stood just inside the door, taking it all in.

  “Uh, what exactly are you doing around here? Whatever it is, somebody doesn’t think much of it.”

  “I’m an agricultural investigator. I’m consulting for a crop-insurance company, Ag-Sure, trying to determine just how the dodder vine came to be in this area.”

  “I know about the dodder vine. My uncle’s a farmer, and he’s got that mess. Says you can’t do anything with it.” The deputy frowned. “This doesn’t make us look too good, does it?”

  “Who’s your uncle?” Becca asked.

  “Jake Wilkes. He’s got a small farm on the southern side of the county. Ryan knows him.”

  She turned to Ryan. “Was he at that meeting this morning?”

  “No. The only farmers there were the big dogs in the county.”

  “So you’re a big dog?” she teased.

  “Not me. I was only there because Murphy—” Ryan hesitated “—suggested I be there. I didn’t stay long.”

  “What’s this about a meeting?” Brandon asked.

  Becca filled him in on the specifics of the meeting. He asked Ryan a few more questions, looking even more disturbed.

  “Just between us, Ryan, I don’t like it that Murphy called that meeting, and then that hangman’s noose shows up on Miss Becca’s door. Ma’am, I don’t know who you’ve managed to tick off, but I…I would proceed with caution from here on out.”

  “So you think Murphy is capable of this? And dumb enough to think it would work?”

  The deputy and Ryan exchanged long looks. “Murphy’s pretty much capable of anything when money’s involved, but you’re right. He’s too smart for an overt threat that would make you take a closer look at him. Personally, I wouldn’t put much past Murphy, but I think he’d draw the line at something like this,” Wilkes told her. “Farmers like Ryan and my uncle, well, they don’t have too high an opinion of guys like Murphy. Right, Ryan?”

  Ryan nodded. “Can’t say that I disagree with you. I tried to give Murphy the benefit of the doubt when I first moved back here, but maybe it’s just because I respect the old-timers like Jake more than I do guys like Murphy.”

  Wilkes turned his attention back to the doorknob. “I’ll write this up in a report. I can’t do much more about it than that, though, I’m afraid. Wish I could, especially since I know Murphy might be involved.”

  “Not a little bitter, are you there, Brandon?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah, I’m bitter. Just wait till Murphy takes half of your farm out of some rigged tax deal, then you’ll see how Uncle Jake feels.”

  “I know. I know. It was a raw deal.”

  “Well, water under the bridge now. Let me grab my digital camera out of the car, and I’ll snap a picture or two for the report.”

  Becca went back to her car and grabbed her own camera. As she snapped her photos, Wilkes looked at the camera in open admiration.

  “That an SLR?”

  “Yeah. It’s a couple of years old now, and doesn’t have anywhere near all the bells and whistles that have come out in the past few months. But—” she smoothed her fingers over the camera’s housing “—I like it. It has interchangeable lenses, which is great.”

  “Sounds like you’re a real serious photographer.”

  Becca thought about the magazine she’d birthed—and watched die a premature death. She thought about the years she’d spent behind a camera at various daily newspapers. “I was,” she said, her voice hollow, “in a previous life.”

  Wilkes nodded in comprehension. “I used to work on my uncle’s farm—was a full partner—but then we lost half the farm and he couldn’t really justify having me on, you know? I like this job well enough. I’ve been with the sheriff’s department part-time for a long time anyway, just to make ends meet. I was lucky the sheriff could put me to work full-time, but I miss being on a tractor. A patrol car gets kind of cramped when you’re used to the wind on your face.”

  Becca looked from Wilkes’s pensive expression to Ryan, seeing a kinship there. She realized how big a part of life farming was for these men. She knew, from her own experience, how it felt to be ripped from doing what you loved and put instead to doing what you were merely good at.

  “Well.” With a shake of his head, the deputy brought the conversation back to why she’d called him here. “I’ve got what I need. I’m going to ta
lk to the desk clerk—they usually have someone there until midnight. Maybe they saw something,” Wilkes said. “Want to come with me?”

  Becca nodded. “Yes, I do. I’d like to hear it for myself.”

  “She needs another room, closer to the motel office. This here—” Ryan looked up in disgust at the fluorescent light that had halfheartedly flickered on “—this is just asking for trouble.”

  “I agree,” Becca told him. “Surely they’ve got a room that’s better lit.”

  The desk clerk could give them no assistance. He swore that he’d seen no headlights until Becca’s—he’d recognized the Mini Cooper. But as he produced another key for a room near the office, he said it was possible someone had been by, as he’d taken an extralong supper break.

  Outside, Wilkes shook Becca’s hand. “You can pick up a copy of the report tomorrow. I’ll be on in the evening, so I’ll be sure to swing by here on my way out to the interstate. That might convince that clerk to do a better job. Ryan, good seeing you again. I’ll tell my uncle you said hello.”

  “Good seeing you, too.”

  Becca and Ryan headed for the new room. It was a carbon copy of the old one, albeit a little more stale and airless.

  “Here. We’ll leave the door open while we move your stuff,” Ryan told her.

  All that was left for her to do was sweep her toothpaste and other toiletry items into her bag. Ryan insisted on carrying it to her room for her. Inside the new room, he pushed the door closed.

  “Brandon is right, Becca. You’ve sure angered somebody. I know you have your job to do, but as much as I’d like you to stay around longer, I don’t want to see—” he looked off in the distance “—anything happen to you. Maybe whoever did this just wanted to make some juvenile warning, but if they were dumb enough to do that, they might be dumb enough to try something else.”

  Her mind remembered his earlier words. “You want me to stay around longer?”