by Deb Donahue
“That woman is such a cat lover.” Patty continued. “She’d be a crazy old cat lady if she lived alone, but there’s plenty of room on that farm for all the cats she wants. Swarms and swarms of them, like mewling bees. Oh, where are my manners, going on and on while you stand here on the porch. Come in, come in.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring something more,” Miranda said as she stepped inside the vestibule. “I haven’t had time for baking and don’t have much on hand at the house yet.”
“Oh, no need to apologize,” Patty said, leading Miranda into a formal living room where every available chair and couch were covered was crocheted afghans. “Getting a jar of Sissy’s award-winning peaches is the best treat you could offer a person, that’s for sure. Sit down, sit down, I’ll go find the hubby and tell him to get down here and be sociable.”
Her idea of “finding” her husband was to stand in the entrance to the front hall and call toward the stairs for him at the top of her lungs. She turned back to Miranda. “Have you been to Harlan’s yet? You’d think they were raising cats instead of cattle, let me tell you. I offered to feed them for Sissy one weekend when she went to visit her ailing mother in Mankato. Minnesota, don’t you know? You probably noticed her funny little accent. They came running in droves. All I had to do was rattle the feed bag and they raced right at me. Appeared right out of the walls, seemed like. Lucky I didn’t step on ‘em as I made my way back out of the shed.”
“Step on them?” Confused, Miranda perched on the edge of a love seat which was draped with a cover made of green, yellow and white granny squares.
“The cats, of course. Sissy and Harlan let them breed like rabbits around the place. Imagine that, they castrate their cattle but don’t even think about suggesting they neuter a cat. The shed floor was a huge carpet of kittens before I even finished filling all the food dishes. Now, you wait here and I’ll be right back. Got to get the roast out of the oven, don’t you know.”
She walked across the hall to the dining room and then disappeared into the kitchen just as her husband came down the stairs. He was quite a bit older than Patty, balding with brown age spots on his face and scalp. He greeted Miranda with a nod and a deep-toned “Howdy” then sat in a rocking chair and picked up his pipe.
Miranda tried to made conversation as he filled the bowl with tobacco and searched a drawer in the end table for matches. “Thank you for inviting me to dinner, Mr. Carmichael.” The appellation seemed too formal but Patty hadn’t told her his first name. “It’s a beautiful day.”
Mr. Carmichael nodded, tamping tobacco leaves into the pipe bowl and striking a match. “Yep, yep, that it is.” Puffing, he held the match to the pipe. Finally it lit. He inhaled, then blew out a ring of smoke. Leaning back, he grinned at her like he was proud of his success.
Miranda’s further attempts to start a conversation were complicated by the man’s naturally languid manner and the fact that he had to relight his pipe every two or three puffs. He was an accountant. “CPA,” he stated when she asked what he did for a living. “All my life,” was all he said when she asked how long he’d lived in Greenville.
Finally, Miranda, just stood up and said, “Why don’t I go see if Patty needs any help in the kitchen?”
Patty didn’t. In fact, Miranda only made it as far as the dining room before Patty walked through the door with a huge platter piled with beef and potatoes and carrots and turnips. Pearl onions that had been cooked with the roast and veggies were nestled between huge chunks of root vegetables like cloudy, sightless eyeballs. Kitten eyes, Miranda thought. She giggled but Patty didn’t notice. She was calling her husband to the table in as loud a voice as she had summoned him downstairs.
Bread and “salad” had already been placed on the table: limp slices of white bread and raw shredded carrots suspended in cubes of green gelatin. Patty called it Jell-O Salad. Mr. Carmichael’s saucer held a double-wide chunk which he started on as soon as grace was said. The Jell-O wobbled as he cut it with his fork and each bite was sucked in with a noisy slurp.
“You do love your salad, don’t you, darling?” Patty smiled and her husband smiled back just as adoringly, nodding as he inhaled another bite of the slippery green and orange glob.
Patty turned to Miranda. “I am so sorry you had to leave the festival early the other day. You would have loved the egg toss and three-legged races. And at dusk there were hayrides around the town square.”
Patty proceeded to list every part of the Fall Festival Miranda had missed, and a few that she hadn’t. She added great detail to each story. A six-year-old girl and her mother, wearing matching red-checked shirts, won the first race by a mile. The mayor had missed his egg when it was thrown to him and had yolk in his eyebrows the rest of the day because no one wanted to embarrass him by mentioning it.
When dessert came—a wedge of store-bought angel food cake covered with defrosted crushed strawberries and topped with a blob of non-dairy whipped topping— Patty told Miranda all about that Sunday morning’s service. She concluded with: “The organist was at his best today, truly he was. Isn’t that right, dear?” Without waiting for the expected “Yep, yep” from her husband, Patty added, “You simply have to join us next Sunday, Miranda dear, to hear how beautiful Rock of Ages sounds when played by a true musician.”
After the stress of the morning, it was soothing to be able to just sit and eat and nod and smile. Despite the soapy taste of the green gelatin, Miranda cleaned her plate, except for the pearl onions which she rolled off to one side. She agreed that How Great Thou Art was still the best hymn ever written, and looked suitably impressed when told how much it had cost to add a new sanctuary to the church building last year. When invited to wait in the front room with Mr. Carmichael while Patty cleared the table, however, Miranda insisted on helping.
“You’ve done all the work getting ready,” she said. “The least I can do is help clean up. Besides, we can have a little girl talk in the kitchen this way.” Patty seemed delighted to oblige.
Patty washed and Miranda dried. They were halfway finished before there was a break in the conversation where Miranda could slip in a topic she’d been thinking about all afternoon.
“You asked earlier if I’ve been to Harlan’s yet.” Miranda ran the dishtowel around another large dinner plate. “I was there the other day, but I was thinking of going over again tomorrow to thank Sissy for the food she sent. I’d like to take something with me as a thank you. Is it just Harlan and Sissy and Bob Meeks, or are other farm hands living there, too?”
“I imagine there might be what with harvest in full swing like it is. Fall and spring are busy times around here, don’t you know. Bob is there year round, of course, but with all the acreage Harlan’s got, he needs at least an extra pair of hands or three come planting time and harvest.”
“Is it hard to find seasonal help like that? For instance, this spring, who’d he end up hiring? Local people?”
Patty rinsed a handful of silverware under the running faucet and dumped them in the dish drainer then fished the stopper out to let the water drain from the chipped porcelain sink. Grabbing the dirty roasting pan off the stove, she drained the last of the meat juices into a Mason jar and set the pan in the emptied sink. Turning on the water again to fill the pan, she said, “We’ll just let this soak a while, won’t we?” She grabbed the dish soap and squirted a stream of it under the running water. When soap bubbles finally reached the rim of the pot she turned the water off. Wiping her hands on her apron she turned and leaned against the sink before finally answering Miranda’s question.
“Locals usually have their own fields to plant. That or working at the steel mill. There’s plenty of out-of-towners to pick from usually, though. Drifters who know when to hang out around the Tractor Supply Company out at the edge of Riverside. I’d never hire a stranger like that, but the farmers got to get the crops in now, don’t they? In the ground in the spring, in the silos come fall.”
Patty walked to the d
oorway between the kitchen and dining room and stopped, head tilted. She looked back at Miranda and grinned. “Hear that?” she stage-whispered. “Snoring like a windstorm. Happens every Sunday. He don’t even bother turning on a ball game first anymore.”
Patty tiptoed over to a corner cabinet and pulled open the wooden doors, taking out a decanter filled with amber liquid. “How about a little apricot brandy to end the meal? Goes well with girl talk.” She grinned.
While Patty poured, Miranda tried to keep the information coming. “I’m with you, I think. About hiring strangers, I mean. Has Harlan ever— Did you meet whoever he hired this past spring? Did he have any trouble with any of them?”
Patty took the two glasses of brandy over to the kitchen table and sat down, motioning Miranda to join her. Taking a swallow, she smacked her lips before answering. “He only hired one young man this past May. I can’t recall his name, though. Cute young thing: brown hair and green eyes and quite the smile, don’t you know.”
She had to be talking about Luke’s twin brother. Miranda pictured Luke’s brown hair, beautiful green eyes, bare chest and tight abs. She blushed, then shook the picture out of her mind to follow what Patty was saying.
“… in the grocery store one day and he was flirting shamelessly with the checker. The girl was loving it up, let me tell you. Giggling fit to pee her pants. No, wait, there must have been two he hired. There was that tall drink of water, too. Older, that one, in his forties, maybe. Spare tire around the middle. I remember thinking he probably didn’t get quite as much work done as the younger one, but by then there was only a few more acres to go. Oh, that’s what happened! Now I remember. That first cute one took off halfway through the season without a word to anyone. Just packed his bags and hit the road. Harlan was fit to be tied. That man don’t curse often, I’ll tell you, but when he does, just cover the kids’ ears, if you hear what I’m saying.”
Miranda was excited to hear the news. It sounded like Luke might be telling her the truth after all. She took a sip of her brandy and grimaced. “He just disappeared? Did anyone see him leave?”
“Not that I ever heard tell. Too bad about that one. A young man that fine would have been welcome to take up residence anywhere in the county.” Patty lifted her glass and drained the last of her drink. Her eyes seemed a little bleary and a silly smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. “Drifters, you know? They drift in and they drift back out again, don’t you know.”
Miranda did know. One with brown hair and green eyes and drifted into her life and was living in her barn, injured and obsessing over the fate of the same hired hand Patty was smiling about. Miranda felt guilty for not telling her friend about the body she’d found. Several times during the rest of their conversation she almost did.
What would the post mistress think, Miranda wondered, if it was discovered that the “fine young man” she remembered was probably a pile of rotting bones in a creek bed? It would be better for the sheriff to be the one to bring the subject up, however. While Miranda did not think that Patty had anything to do with the disappearance, she didn’t want to confuse any inves-tigation the authorities might pursue.
So she accepted another drop of brandy in her already full glass and let the subject stray off to mundane, small town gossip. Her mind, however, could not release the image of the grinning skull trapped within the roots and debris of the creek bed.
Chapter 16
The pain pills kept Luke under till early afternoon. Then slowly the ache of the injury seeped into his nightmares. When finally the effects of the drug wore off and the pain reached its peak, Luke sat straight up on his sleeping bag with an exclamation of agony. He wasn’t sure what was tearing him apart the worst, the physical pain, or the thought that his brother was dead at the hand of Harlan Hunter or his flunky.
Butch whined and edged closer, nosing his master gently in the ribs. The worried puppy eyes in the Shepherd’s face seemed too human to look at for long. Luke patted him and issued soothing words, but the dog wasn’t fooled. He knew things had gone to hell; it was time for Luke to admit it as well.
He was a vet, not a cop or a private investigator. He should have gone to the sheriff at the beginning and pushed for an investigation. Even if they wouldn’t have taken any action, he could have gone up the ladder as far as he had to until someone started believing him. His natural instinct to protect his brother had led him into foolishness again. When would he learn?
Because of that, his brother’s body had probably been rotting away in the creek bed all this time. It made no sense to go down there himself to verify what Miranda had found. Whoever it was, it was beyond his expertise to identify the remains or to solve the mystery of what had happened and why. And what was he going to do even if he did discover that Harlan and Bob were up to no good tonight? Luke’s injury had left him feeling weaker than he expected.
It was time to bring in the authorities.
He washed down another pain pill with his canteen and forced himself to eat a few handfuls of trail mix. Then, before the drugs could make him sleepy again, he forced himself to his feet, using the dog to help steady himself. Looking out the loft window, he saw Miranda’s car was gone. He’d been planning to ask her to keep an eye on Butch while he went into town.
So his first stop would have to be the town vet. There was a good chance the sheriff would lock Luke up rather than listen to him. It would be impossible to hide the fact that he’d been shot and it was a small leap from there to finding out he’d been trespassing the night before. If Luke ended up having to cool his heels in jail for a day or two until he could convince someone to believe his story, he didn’t want Butch to end up left all alone with no one to care for him. Paying to have the dog boarded at a kennel for a few days should give him enough time to figure some things out.
Carting his stuff down the road to where he had hidden his truck took him longer than he expected. The pain made him move slowly and the pills made him feel like he was slogging through mud. Between his bum shoulder and the grogginess from the drugs, it would be a miracle if he didn’t crash the truck before he even made it to town. He turned the radio on loud when he finally started out, and drove all the way to Riverside with the windows rolled down and the cold wind swirling. Butch loved it, but the medication still had Luke yawning so frequently and so wide that he felt his jaw would unhinge.
His first stop was the fast food drive-in window by the highway. If Butch was going to have to put up with kennel conditions and grub, the least Luke could do was give the dog a good feast before he was incarcerated. He ordered three hamburgers and had them throw in an order of fries for himself. He still felt a little sick to his stomach but he thought hunger might be partly the cause for the light headedness he was dealing with.
He parked in the parking lot to eat, giving Butch two of the burgers and about half the fries. He’d thought he wouldn’t be able to eat, but it had been days since he had cooked food and his first bite tasted so good he inhaled his burger almost as fast as his dog had.
Though it was only late afternoon, storm clouds had rolled in overhead making it seem like twilight already. The cars that pulled into the gas station across the road all had their headlights on and the lampposts in the shopping center parking lot behind the station had already clicked on. Other than a few people shopping and some vehicles driving by on the highway, the place looked typically sleepy for a small town Sunday afternoon.
Luke closed his eyes for a second, just a second, to rest them. The next thing he knew, two sharp barks from Butch jerked him awake. Startled and disoriented, he reached for his rifle instinctively and rapped his hand against the steering wheel instead. The movement caused a twinge of pain in his shoulder that made him cry out.
At first he could not tell what had set Butch off. Twilight had descended for real now and the storm clouds overhead reflected the pink highway lights. A Mack truck pulling a huge white trailer had stopped at the gas station. Just as Luke noticed, the drive
r honked the air horn again and Butch went into another flurry of barking that ended in pitiful whining.
“Quiet, girl,” Luke said. A man approaching the semi from a car parked off to the side of the pumps. The man was the same one he’d seen Bob Meeks talking to the other day. A glance at the car he’d been driving confirmed his suspicion. It was a black BMW.
As Luke watched, the BMW owner stepped up on the running board to talk through the driver side window. With one arm he pointed ahead as he talked. He appeared to be giving directions. Luke waited, tense and wide awake at last. His painful shoulder was forgotten.
When the truck finally pulled out with the BMW in the lead, Luke started his own engine and followed, letting them get a block or so ahead of him. He trailed them all the way out of Riverside, headed in the expected direction—toward Harlan Hunter’s. The semi did not pull in there, however, going past the entrance to Hunter’s farm and turning left at the next intersection.
The storm clouds crowded the sky and in the resulting inky night, Luke’s truck was well concealed as he followed, keeping a discreet distance behind. After a while, the truck turned off its lights and Luke did likewise. Neither driver needed them anymore because it was clear finally where they were headed. Luke stopped his truck and waited at the side of the road, watching the white ghostly shape of the tractor trailer pull into the mouth of Miranda’s driveway.
Chapter 17
Miranda had gone straight to the barn when she returned from Patty’s, intending to share what she’d learned. Instead, she found the loft empty. Totally empty, no Luke, no dog, no sleeping bag even. The only indication Luke was more than a figment of her imagination was the flattened straw where he had slept and a pile of bloody bandages on a straw bale.
Where could he have gone? Had he been lying to her after all? She shook her head as she headed back down the ladder. He wasn’t lying about having a brother—she’d seen the picture. And from what Patty had told her, it didn’t sound like he’d lied about the brother working for Harlan, either.
