Reapers (Breakers, Book 4)

by Edward W. Robertson

  The Tolbert men shot up their eyebrows and fell over each other to vacate the stairs and bring her some water. George had a fire going in the living room, and after the five-mile run, the home felt stiflingly warm. Ellie glugged down a full glass of water, refilled it herself, and went out back to cool down. The others followed, settling into the lawn chairs.

  "Have you seen anyone around here lately?" she said.

  George shook his head. "Just your midnight skulker."

  "When was the last time you saw the wheat?"

  "Yesterday. Morning." He leaned forward with a frown. "Do you mean to lead this investigation?"

  "Do you have a problem with that?"

  "It's my farm. My business."

  Ellie took a long drink to stop herself from saying something stupid. "No offense, George, but you and your son keep running into trouble. I think a third party is the best chance to put a stop to it."

  "Just like you did with the Chase boy?"

  "Has there been another incident? Then don't question my work."

  She'd spoken with more vehemence than she'd meant to and for a moment the night was so quiet they could hear the lake lapping the dark shore.

  "I'll go with her, Dad," Quinn said.

  Ellie raised a brow. "Not to see Sam."

  "If it isn't him, I mean."

  George rubbed his jaw. He normally kept it clean shaven but white bristles showed in the candlelight. "It would be nice to have a Tolbert represented in the field."

  "You're kind of young, aren't you?" Ellie said.

  Quinn laughed in a careless way that did not bode well for a long and happy life. "I'm nineteen. In the old days, nineteen-year-olds were sent to war."

  "The old days? You mean like 2007?"

  "Before the plague. When everything was safe and kids had to be sealed away from anything that could hurt them."

  Ellie glared into her water glass. "The army knew it's best to train killers from an early age."

  "It's a new world," George declared. "Time for my boy to learn how to navigate it. Think you're the best person for the job, Ellie? Then you're the best one to show Quinn the ropes."

  Ellie bristled, but she forced herself to take a mental step back. Quinn meant to marry her daughter. Some day—a day that would come much sooner than Ellie had grown up to expect—she wouldn't be there for them. Maybe it was time to introduce them to the darker shades of adult life.

  "George, I want a list of everyone you talked to in town yesterday," she said. "At first light I'll take a look at the barn and talk to Sam." She raised her eyebrows at Quinn. "I want you ready by the time I get back."

  "Yes ma'am," he said. "Suppose we ought to sleep in shifts?"

  She doubted the thieves would come back tonight, but it couldn't hurt. She took one of the middle shifts. While the others slept, she gazed through the front window at the dark fields. The dew had frozen to the shorn stalks and the frost gleamed in the moonshine like lost treasure.

  It hadn't melted at dawn when she walked to the barn. She unlocked the padlock. The hinges squeaked. The dust and straw had been stirred every which way. She was mostly interested in the stray grains of wheat that had been crushed into a homogenous powder. And the pair of ruts leading northeast from the barn toward the road to town.

  She closed up the barn and walked down the shore to the Chase's. After the third time she knocked, she heard the old man bellowing.

  Sam's eyes were red, his face creased and swollen from insufficient sleep. "Man, I am so sick of your face."

  "I hope this is the last you have to see it."

  "Great. What would you like to accuse me of now?"

  She felt herself flush. "Night before last, some of George's grain went missing."

  Sam gritted his teeth and hooked his finger in his cheek like a snagged fish. "Want to check my pouches?"

  "I don't think you did it," Ellie said. "But if I can check your sheds, we can stave off the drama before it starts."

  He sighed and bladed his hand against the dawn to peer at the trees separating his home from the Tolberts'. "Let me grab a shirt. For you, I'll even put on shoes."

  The attached garage housed two Mustangs, a powder blue '65 and a late model as bright as first blood. Ellie walked past, confirming there were no tubs of wheat concealed at the back of the garage.

  "These things run?"

  "You looking to buy?" Sam said.

  "Just want to know what to steal if the zombies roll in."

  He snorted and led her to two sheds: one filled with tools, the other stacked with wood. As he opened the door to the second, a black widow scrambled up its shredded webbing. Sam cursed and yanked off his shoe and smashed the widow into yellow goo.

  Last, he took her to the little boathouse. The only thing that smelled fishy was the air.

  "Sorry to wake you, Sam," she said. "I owe you one."

  "This early in the morning, the price goes up to three."

  He closed the door on her. She walked through the pines to George's. The others sat in the kitchen eating eggs and bread toasted in the skillet on the wood stove.

  "It wasn't Sam," Ellie said. "Not unless he's working with someone else."

  "How do you figure?" Quinn said.

  "Wagon ruts outside the barn. Anyway, he's more tired of us than he is mad." She grabbed a slice of toast from the plate and beckoned at George. "Where are my names?"

  He handed her a sheet of paper. It included fourteen people, mostly by name, though there were a couple vague descriptors like "man in the black hat." She scanned it twice, then tapped one of the names, letting her memory do its work.

  "Mort Franklin. Quinn, you said he'd had trouble with your dad."

  "Sure enough," Quinn said.

  "Who is he?"

  "A religious nutbag is who he is."

  "Quinn," George reproached.

  "Well, ain't he?" Quinn said through a mouthful of eggs cooked in saved fat. "He's got like three wives and ten kids."

  "Mormon?" Ellie said.

  George shook his head. "The gentleman is simply taking advantage of the lax enforcement of polygamy laws. We really ought to have requirements for citizenship. We can't go on allowing freaks and madmen to attach themselves to our town."

  "Why's he mad at you?"

  George shrugged. Quinn rolled his eyes. "Because Dad sold him a fake piano."

  George pitched up his voice. "It's got 'Steinway' printed right on it. He inspected it himself."

  Ellie glanced between the men. "You knew him before the plague?"

  "Heavens no. Last year."

  "We're digging latrines and watching the skies for a second wave and Mort Franklin is up in arms over a fraudulent piano?"

  "Nutbag," Quinn muttered.

  "Sounds promising," Ellie said. "Now take that pistol off your hip and let's go."

  He glanced at the bulge on the side of his untucked shirt but did as he was told.

  "He's a crazy person," Dee said, "and that makes you think it's a good idea to confront him?"

  "Enemies are like family," Ellie said. "You don't get to choose them. And you can only avoid them for so long."

  Quinn had wheeled the bikes out of the garage while she was at Sam's. Dee and George watched from the porch as Ellie and Quinn walked them across the field toward the road north of the property.

  "Were you some kind of detective?" Quinn said.

  "Of patterns. Predictions. I never ran investigations like this."

  "Then how come you're so good at it?"

  "We'll see what the results have to say," she said. "Actually, that's dead wrong. In evaluating success, we don't care about the results. We care about the process."

  Quinn gave her a dubious look. "I care about results. But I'm one of those weirdos who prefers not to starve to death."

  "When things are in flux, you can't guarantee a good outcome." She frowned vaguely. "If you do things the right way, and things turn out wrong, that's not failure. That's bad luck."

/>   "What if you keep doing things right but things keep turning out wrong?"

  "Then you question whether the process is right in the first place."

  They crossed the churned-up dirt to the road and biked through Saranac Lake en route to Lake Placid. The wind was frigid, numbing Ellie's ears and nose. In Saranac Lake, a flagpole chain clanked senselessly. Neither of them spoke until they were on the other side of town and the pines enclosed the road.

  "So what is our process?" Quinn said, as if the silence had lasted ten seconds instead of ten minutes.

  "Ask Mort Franklin what happened."

  "Thieves don't lie?"

  "People with something to hide don't react well to direct questions," Ellie said. "Most aren't professional liars. Their emotions get the best of them."

  Quinn glanced at her from under her brow. "Does Dee know all this stuff?"

  "Are you asking me whether you can get away with lying to your wife?"

  "Well no, I was just wondering if you'd trained her. Like if someone tried to swindle us."

  Ellie chuckled. "See?"

  Quinn pushed his brows together, then flushed. Mountains framed the town of Lake Placid. The trees had gone red and orange like living flame. Ellie biked past the quaint downtown to Millie Perkins' lakeside general store. It was early in the morning but the old woman had already opened shop, a fire crackling in the proud hearth of the converted resort.

  "Mort Franklin," Ellie said. "Know where he lives?"

  Millie pulled her hand from her apron pocket and gestured east. "Thereabouts."

  "Perfect. See you next year." Ellie bit her tongue. "You deliver. I thought you knew the address of everyone upstate and half of Vermont."

  "Franklins always pick it up themselves."

  Ellie began to curse and halted mid-syllable. Like many of the locals, Millie swore with homespun euphemisms that felt pickled and preserved from the 1820s. In the face of real obscenity, she got curt in a way that implied you'd best be on your way.

  She tried again. "Know anyone who might know where they live?"

  "Well." Millie leaned over the counter and planted her chin in her palm. "They tried to run services a few years back. Dan Beavers might have thought to attend."

  "The guy who makes the shoes? Thanks, Millie." Ellie led Quinn into the cold autumn street. Brick shops and stolid New England homes stared them down. "Beavers is an honest-to-god cobbler. I don't get it. Every closet in town has a dozen pairs of shoes in it."

  Quinn glanced at the clouds moving in from the mountains. "People do a lot more walking these days. There's something to be said for getting fit for a pair made just for you."

  Dan Beavers tanned his own leather and had been considerate enough to locate his business upshore and generally downwind from town. Ellie headed up the road through the trees to his home, another faux log cabin with bay windows and a separate multi-car garage Beavers had converted into a workshop. The doors were open and he sat inside bent over a bench, hands full of leather and an oversized needle.

  "Dan?" Ellie called from a polite distance. "My name's Ellie Colson. I'm looking for the Franklin home. Millie thought you might know it."

  The man straightened from his work and threw back his head for a good look at her. "Mort Franklin? Lives on Holcomb Pond. What do you want with him?"

  "Just a few questions."

  Beavers had wild white hair and a gnomish face. He poked his tongue in his cheek. "Unless they're the burning variety, you might want to skip the trip."

  Ellie stepped inside. It smelled like fresh leather and honest sweat. "Why's that?"

  "Few years back, he began a revival. Don't have much in the way of church these days. Thought I'd drop by. But if he's quoting scripture, the man's got a different Bible than I do."

  "Oh?"

  "He's one of those 'dangling by a spiderweb over the pits of Hell' types." Dan cracked a smile. "Haven't heard words like those since my grandpa took me to see the Finneys."

  Ellie smiled helplessly. "I appreciate the warning, but I don't have much choice."

  "Take Riverside south from 86. Trail's about a mile in, left-hand side."

  Ellie thanked him and turned to go, but her curiosity got the best of her. "Dan, why do you make shoes? Not that they're not good..."

  "But anyone can loot as many as they need?" He smiled and gazed across his workshop. "It won't be like that forever. Best we start preparing for that day. Anyway, people like to get things made special just for them. Things they know will last. Not everyone wants to be a cobbler, you know? There's something fine about not having to do everything for yourself."

  She returned to the road. Soon, all signs of civilization disappeared besides the pavement, swallowed by a forest that suddenly felt pre-Columbian. Wind sifted through the pines. Birds twirped to each other, disinterested in the pair of cyclists hissing along the road.

  She turned south on Riverside. A mile later, the eastern trail was nearly as well-hidden as Bill Noesi's; it was Quinn who spotted the unmarked dirt path. Ellie sometimes suspected the young had the advantage on that front. She'd been spoiled by GPS, cell phones, Google maps.

  The trail wound through the pines. When it grew too muddy and leaf-clogged, they dismounted to walk their bikes.

  Quinn pointed ahead. "Suppose that's it?"

  Past the thinning trees, a meadow lay in the overcast morning. Three fresh-hewn log cabins had been arranged on the banks of a modest pond, its wind-driven riffles glinting dully.

  "Let me do the talking," Ellie said.

  The voice came from nowhere. "You the law?"

  Ellie whipped her gaze both directions and reached for her pistol.

  "I wouldn't." The voice was accented with harsh vowels that lingered like the call of a predatory bird. On a bough to the side of the trail, a young man leered down at them, shoeless feet black on the soles. A rifle canted across his lap. "This is private property. So I say again: are you the law?"

  "I'm here to see Mort Franklin," Ellie said.

  "And he isn't here to see you," the young man said. Ellie stepped forward. The boy snapped the rifle to his hip and stared down steadily. "If you was to disappear right now, do you suppose anyone would know it?"

  She grimaced. "We'll be back."

  "Look forward to it," he smirked. She turned and walked her bike back up the trail. The voice followed them through the trees. "I know you, Quinn Tolbert!"

  "Well, that wasn't cool," Quinn said to her. "What's the next step of our process?"

  Ellie shrugged. "We bring the law."

  The clouds hid the sun's true position, but by the time she rode to the rustic cabin on the point north of Paradox Bay, it was noon or later. In the day's first stroke of luck, Sheriff Hobson answered the door bearing a briar pipe and a look of eager curiosity.

  "Ms. Colson!" he declared. "And young Quinn Tolbert. I hope there hasn't been another incident?"

  Ellie couldn't force herself to maintain eye contact. "We need your help. Legal matter."

  "Aha. And what would be the exact nature of these matters?"

  "Theft."

  "If I have to keep pulling your figurative teeth, I'll have to arrest myself for theft."

  She let out a long breath through her nose. "A significant portion of George Tolbert's wheat crop has been stolen. I've ruled out Sam Chase. Now, signs point to Mort Franklin."

  Hobson's gray brow rose with intrigue. He sucked on his pipe, enfolding himself in prodigious blue smoke. "The man of God forgets the Eighth Commandment, eh? What inclines you to read his name in the signs?"

  Ellie wanted to vanish through the porch. "A while back, George sold him a piano. Franklin believed it was a Steinway. It wasn't."

  The arch look crumpled from Hobson's face, replaced by bafflement. "A counterfeit piano? Why wasn't I notified?"

  "Was a couple years back," Quinn said. "One of those 'he said, he said' deals."

  Hobson withdrew his pipe from his mouth and examined the stem. "And you belie
ve the chickens are now coming home to roost."

  "Franklin is a Great Awakening-style doomsdayer," Ellie said. "The type to hold a grudge. After running into one of his brood this morning, I think I know who's been harassing the Tolberts."

  "Your evidence seems..." He rolled his hand in the air.

  "Shitty? That's because the Franklin boys ran us off their compound before we'd asked question one. He insisted we come back with the law or not at all—and he knew Quinn by name."

  "Hardly a crime in itself," Hobson muttered. "However, the lakelands are blessedly quiet today. One might even call them 'placid.'" His eyes glittered as he waited for laughter. When none came, he dashed his palm against the bowl of his pipe, scattering dottle to the cold wind. "And duty is duty. I'll fetch my steed."

  He disappeared inside, then came back with his bicycle. Given his Victorian affectations, Ellie was surprised its front wheel wasn't six feet tall.

  The three rode back through town to the highway. Hobson peppered her with questions regarding the "case." She answered best she could, but it only highlighted how little she had to work with.

  "My most significant question is why now?" Hobson's bowler fluttered in the wind. He tugged the brim to snug it over his long, graying hair. "Revenge is elementary, but delaying for so long is highly unusual."

  "Unless you're a Klingon," Ellie said.

  "Mort Franklin isn't normal," Quinn said. "If you expect his mind to act like yours, you're gonna be left holding your dick in your hand."

  "Quinn," Ellie said, if only to hide her grin.

  "A touch vivid," Hobson said, "but I shall bear it in mind."

  This time, Ellie spotted the trail herself. At its head, Hobson moved in front and parked his bike. "I'll take it from here."

  Ellie swung her jaw to the side. "This is my investigation."

  He gazed at her, eyebrows raised. "If you were a homicide detective, would you take the victim's family with you to question your suspects?"

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  "You came to me because you've hit a block. If you'd like to move past it, kindly let me do my job."

  "Damn it." Ellie folded her arms. "Get them to speak with me. And don't get shot."

  "Thank you for the professional advice." He touched the brim of his bowler and picked his way down the path.