I pressed him for dates, and finally he told me that the first time Emory had trouble with the law he was just a child of about ten or eleven. The second time, he was older, a young adult of about twenty.
“I never heard this before.”
“It’s true.”
Mike knelt and studied a half-rotted pumpkin that was nearly hidden in the tall grass.
“Was he charged with a crime?”
“I don’t know details about the first time. He was a juvie then, and those records are sealed. The second time, from what I could see, he was charged, but your grandfather worked things out with everyone involved and the charges were eventually dropped.”
“What was he accused of doing?”
Mike poked at the pumpkin with a stick.
“I’d rather not say. You might ask someone in your family about it. Maybe your father knows and could tell you. I shouldn’t even have said this much. I just assumed you knew.”
I stood there for a moment, trying to understand what he was saying. Poor Emory was so clueless in certain areas that I had to wonder if perhaps he had accidentally committed a crime, such as walking out of a store with a candy bar in his hand without paying for it. Whatever had happened, it had to have been an accident. Emory was about as innocent and guileless as they come.
“Does this look like scat to you?” Mike asked, holding back the weeds with his stick.
Trying not to be grossed out, I leaned over to take a closer look, wondering why he was doing this if the bear had already been caught. Reaching for another stick, I pushed more of the weeds out of the way and then I couldn’t help but laugh, pointing toward its stem, which was still attached to the vine.
“Spend much time tracking wild animals, do you?” I teased.
“Okay, okay, so I’m a city boy at heart. I just spotted the orange of the pumpkin and thought maybe it was similar to what my guys found over near your pool.”
Mike tossed his stick aside and stood.
“Why were you reading Emory’s file anyway? Surely you don’t think he had anything to do with Troy’s death.”
He shrugged, brushing the dirt from his hands.
“This property offers direct access to the grove. Nina was found in this driveway. That makes Emory a POI.”
“POI?”
“A person of interest. Don’t worry, Sienna. Your uncle has an alibi for the time span we’re focusing on. He was at work all afternoon, and then he went over to his boss’s house for dinner. He didn’t get back here until almost eleven last night.”
Mike gestured toward the barn, and we continued on our way. While I was glad Emory had an alibi for the time in question, I had to wonder how Mike knew all of that.
“Did you interview him?”
“Didn’t have to. Emory’s boss brought him home last night, and they arrived here at the same time as two of the patrolmen who were going around warning neighbors about a possible animal on the loose. They got the information on his whereabouts at that time.”
“Ah.” No wonder Emory had gotten so worked up last night. He had come home from dinner to find two cops at his house—cops who wanted to know where he had been and what he had been doing.
Mike excused himself to call the other part of the team and tell them to drive on over. When he hung up, I spoke, trying to sound casual. I wondered if he had looked up my name and found me on some government investigation list somewhere.
“So…were there other POIs? Find anything surprising?”
We reached the barn and paused, looking through its cavernous doorway at the activity inside. Soon even more officers and technicians would be here as well, hunting for tools, testing chemicals, trying to solve a puzzle with far too many pieces.
“You might say that I came up with more than I bargained for on a couple of hits,” Mike replied evenly.
Then he headed into the barn with the others and got down to work.
TWENTY
Hovering along the fringes of the action, I had just managed to locate the Dark- eyed Junco nest in a low bush beside the barn when I heard what sounded like gunshots in the distance. I immediately took cover behind the bush and drew my weapon. Watching, waiting, my heart pounding, I suddenly realized that no one else seemed alarmed or had even reacted at all.
Lowering the gun, I listened intently, wondering if I was imagining things. Then I heard the sound again, just as Mike came walking past.
“It’s a nail gun, Collins,” he said dryly, “not a shotgun. You can holster your weapon.”
He continued on past, leaving me there behind the bush with my cheeks burning. Between this incident and the earlier animal scat he thought he’d found, I guessed we were even.
As the distant “bang” happened yet again, I realized that what I had been hearing was, indeed, the sound of nails being shot, not bullets. Slipping my gun back into its fanny pack holster, I was just glad that I hadn’t done something really ridiculous, such as yelling “Hit the dirt!” to all of these cops.
Feeling like an idiot, I slunk away in search of the noise’s source, which sounded as though it was coming from the springhouse, a picturesque little structure that sat on the far side of Emory’s house. Built in the early nineteen hundreds, the springhouse had straddled a cold water creek and was designed to provide refrigeration of sorts thanks to the shallow, rectangular depressions in the floor where perishable foods could be placed. The running spring water would keep those food items cold without the chance of them washing away down the creek. I couldn’t imagine having to store perishables this way, but without any other source of refrigeration, I supposed it was better than nothing.
The staccato sounds of the nail gun were definitely coming from there now. Moving closer to see what was going on, I finally spotted a man perched on top of the roof. It looked as if he was repairing some of the roof tiles, holding them down with one hand while securing them in place with the nail gun he held in the other. Uncertain as to why anyone would be trying to repair this old building that no longer served any purpose, I came even closer. That’s when I saw my cousin Jonah standing nearby, his hands on his hips, looking upward as he chatted with the man on the roof.
“Jonah?”
“Sienna! Hey! You remember Burl Newton, don’t you?”
Shielding my eyes from the sun, I squinted up at the wiry, tanned guy on the roof, who was giving me a wave.
“Of course I do. Hi, Burl. How have you been?”
“Can’t complain. Jus’ had a little free time, so I thought I’d come over and fix this roof like I been promising Emory I would.”
“Don’t believe him,” Jonah said, grinning. “I think he is doing this now so he can get a closer look at everything going on here with all of the policemen.”
“What is going on here?” Burl asked. “I thought they was next door, over at your place.”
“Yes, I would like to know too,” Jonah said. “I was just coming to check on Liesl when I saw all of this activity.”
Without going into detail, I told them of Mike’s pesticide theory, bringing both men up to speed on the general progress of the investigation and ending with the news of the bear that had been caught this morning in Holtwood.
“Ach, I am so glad. Liesl said the children could not go outside until the matter is solved. The girls are doing fine, helping their grossmammi in the kitchen, but the last time I went in there the boys had shaped the piecrust dough into little cows and were lining them up around the table for milking time.”
I laughed, thinking boys would be boys whether Amish or not. I warned Jonah that the police wouldn’t be sure about the bear until the lab tests had come back, but that it didn’t sound as though that would take too long.
“So what’s wrong with the springhouse?” I asked, changing the subject and again shielding my eyes to look up at Burl.
“Bunch of squirrels gnawed a hole clean through some roof tiles. Ain’t all that big of a hole, but it’s letting rain into the beams, rotting the wood. If it don’
t get repaired, eventually this one little hole could cause the whole roof to come down. Not that it would matter, really, but you know Emory.”
Yes, I knew Emory, and I remembered now that Burl did too. An odd and reclusive man, he was nevertheless Emory’s oldest friend. They were the same age and had grown up living on back-to-back properties, easily able to visit and play together as small children without ever having to venture out onto any road. Of course, at some point Emory ceased to mature, intellectually speaking, while Burl had continued to grow up, so their friendship had by necessity transitioned into something else. Though I had never really warmed up to Burl myself, I knew he kept an eye on his old childhood buddy, and I was touched to see him here now, fixing a useless old building just because it mattered to my uncle.
This particular springhouse hadn’t been functioning for years, not since this branch of the creek had dried up and left it without any water. Still, the unused structure had remained, giving a lovely, picturesque touch to the old-timey feel of the property. It was just a shame that it was hidden away like this where more people couldn’t see it.
When we were doing the renovation next door, my mother and I had really wanted the springhouse to be part of it. Our feeling was that if we could have the structure moved from back here out of sight to a far more prominent spot in front of the inn, its rustic beauty would enhance the whole feel of Harmony Grove Bed & Breakfast. Between that and the inn itself and the covered bridge, the entire scene would have made a beautiful vista, something straight out of a storybook.
We had offered to buy the structure from Emory, with the secret hope that he would tell us just to take it, no payment required. Much to our surprise, however, he had turned us down flat, saying that the springhouse was not for sale and would never be for sale, and that it needed to stay exactly where it was forever and ever. At the time we had been surprised most of all by the vehemence of his response. Later on, however, I figured out what the issue was. With its open-air structure and wide rafters, the springhouse provided a perfect habitat for all sorts of birds and small animals.
Even now, as Burl was making such a racket up on the roof, a myriad of birds twittered from nearby trees, probably waiting for us to go away so they could return to their nests.
“Hey, listen, I was sorry to learn of your father’s death last year,” I said to Burl. “If I had heard about it in time, I would have tried to come out for the funeral.”
“Why?”
I was so startled by the question that I couldn’t think of an answer. My comment had been meant as a social nicety, not an actual statement of intent. Obviously sensing the awkwardness of the moment, Jonah interjected that even though I hadn’t known the man very well myself, I had probably wanted to pay respects on behalf of the Collins branch of the family.
“Yeah, well, don’t worry about that. Ain’t like the man’s been missed—not by Collinses or anybody else, for that matter.”
That was true, though I was surprised to hear Burl admit as much about his own father. As a child I had been terrified of Mr. Newton, a surly, grizzled old recluse who once threatened my brother and me with a pitchfork when we ran into his yard to retrieve an errant baseball.
Suddenly, activity over at the barn seemed to increase. From where I stood, I could see several technicians darting in and out, talking on their radios, barking out orders. I wanted to know what they had found, so I excused myself from the two men and retraced my steps around to the front of the barn where I could watch and listen more closely.
From what I could tell, the commotion was over some chemicals that had been found in a storage closet. They had apparently discovered all of my grandfather’s old welding and metalworking solutions, along with the various fertilizer supplements and pesticides he had used in his care of the grove. Of particular interest to the police was a certain pesticide in the form of a white powder. I heard one of them say that the warning label even listed “convulsions” in a list of side effects from overexposure.
Another vehicle arrived, a big, dark van with no back windows, and I moved out of the way even further as a group of people in Hazmat suits got out and went into the barn. The whole thing felt like overkill, but they must have known what they were doing.
A little while later, they began to emerge from the barn carrying large, sealed bags, inside of which they seemed to have placed full containers of the various chemicals they had found, especially the main pesticide in question. More bags followed, and judging by their shapes and sizes, I could tell that those were full of gardening tools, including several shovels.
I wasn’t sure what all this meant. I told myself that it would be good news if the police could prove that Troy’s poisoning had been an accident. Then, perhaps, all other lines of investigation—into organized crime, into Emory, even into me, at least at the local level—could be closed down.
On the other hand, I had to wonder what Mike’s interest in Emory was in the first place. If Mike knew Emory had an alibi for yesterday afternoon and evening, why had he gone into the old police records this morning? What had Emory’s old arrests been about anyway?
I couldn’t ask my father without worrying him to death, and I didn’t want to put any of the older Coblentz relatives in the uncomfortable position of having to tell me family gossip about one of my own elders. Wondering who I might ask, I heard the nail gun going off again, and it struck me that perhaps Burl could fill me in.
I walked back over to the springhouse. Burl was still up on the roof, only now he was sitting fully atop it, straddling the crest as if it were a horse he was riding. Jonah was gone; I assumed he had headed over to the house to see his wife.
I had hoped that when Burl saw me he would come down to the ground so we could talk more easily, but instead he just waved and kept going on with what he was doing. I decided to plunge ahead anyway. After glancing toward the house to make sure there weren’t any open windows through which I might be overheard from inside, I spoke.
“So, Burl, you’ve known Uncle Emory your whole life, right?”
“Pretty much. Since we was about three or four, anyway.”
“Did you know that when he was younger he was arrested by the police?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Can you tell me about it? What happened back then?”
“You mean the first time or the second time?”
My pulse surged. “Both. Can you tell me about both?”
“What’s to tell?” he asked, shooting off three quick nails in a row. “First time, it ended up getting him institutionalized. That was a shame. I really missed him. He didn’t come out of that mental home for years.”
Burl set down his nail gun and picked up a different tool, some sort of drill that was too loud to talk over. As I waited for a break in the noise, I tried to figure out which way to go with my questions. I knew Emory had been in an institution when he was younger, but I had never known the circumstances that had put him there.
“The second time he was arrested, he was older,” Burl said when he finally released the trigger on the drill. “Things were handled a little different that time. But my family didn’t press charges, so the police eventually let it go.”
“Your family? What kind of charges were they? What happened?”
Burl didn’t answer, so I put a hand over my eyes and looked up at him until he replied.
“Look, I really hate to say. It’s all water under the bridge. I don’t hold nothing against Emory for it.”
He began drilling again, and I could tell by his very body language that he didn’t want to discuss the situation. But I wasn’t going to give up that easily, not until I knew the truth. The next time the drill stopped, I jumped right in with my next question.
“What were his crimes, Burl? What had Emory done that was bad enough to get him arrested?”
Without answering, Burl began to put his things away. I wasn’t sure if he was finished with the job or simply wanting to escape my questions.
Finally, as he swung a leg over the crest of the roof and inched his way down the slope to the top of the ladder, he spoke.
“He killed some animals. First time was a rabbit, out in the woods. That didn’t have nothing to do with us. Second time it did, though. Second time was a dog. My dog.”
“Emory killed some animals? Killed your dog? I can’t believe that,” I said, walking to the base of the ladder and holding up a hand to take the drill from him.
“It’s true,” he replied, handing it down to me. “First time he was practically caught red-handed. Even admitted it. Second time, he was older, maybe a little wiser. Denied it like crazy, but everybody knew. The injuries were exactly the same.”
“Injuries?” I asked, squinting. “What kind of injuries? Since when does a little boy killing a rabbit in the woods constitute a crime anyway, especially back in the fifties? Boys go rabbit hunting all the time.”
Burl started down the ladder, not answering until he got to the bottom.
“He wasn’t hunting, Sienna. Just killin’ for pleasure, I guess.”
I frowned, unable to comprehend what this man was saying.
“Emory Collins. Killed some animals.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Burl reached the bottom of the ladder and stepped onto the ground, turning to face me.
“Believe it. It wasn’t too hard to figure out who done it. And like I said, first time around he even admitted it.”
Stunned, I stood there beside the springhouse, silent, as Burl took his tools from me, carried them over to his open toolbox, and set them down inside.
“Emory loves animals, Burl. There’s no way he would ever hurt one. Not him. Ever. Never, ever.”
Burl moved the ladder inside the open springhouse, setting it up directly underneath the spot where he had been working on the roof.
“Look,” he said, glancing at me over his shoulder, “if it helps, Mister Abe did everything he could to make things right. He was so heartbroken about it. Even paid my daddy a lot of money for a new dog and for our pain and suffering.”
Secrets of Harmony Grove Page 17
