by Jon McGoran
She smiled sardonically. “Good fences make good neighbors, right?”
Moose hopped over the fence. “Luckily, it’s on the north side, otherwise it would really take out some sunlight. You guys coming?”
I wasn’t above a little trespassing, but I waited for Nola’s response. She looked at me and shrugged, then hiked a leg onto the fence and hopped over it. I followed suit.
Moose plunged into the greenery, and I went next, holding back some of the thicker branches so they didn’t whack Nola in the face. I put out a hand for her, and she took it—a purely utilitarian gesture that reminded me of a girl named Cindy Mailer and a walk home from school in the sixth grade.
We emerged twenty feet later in front of a ten-foot chain-link fence. It stretched out to our left for at least a quarter mile. To our right, it turned sharply after a hundred feet, angling away from us to follow the hedges that lined the road. Every forty feet or so was a sign that said POSTED: NO TRESPASSING.
“That’s a big fence,” I said.
Just beyond the fence was a field of corn, not very tall, looking slightly gray and withered. A pair of butterflies fluttered down one of the rows. They were a muted orange and black, but looked colorful compared to the drab stalks.
“That’s where you got it?” Nola asked.
“Yeah,” Moose replied. “And it’s all like that.”
“I thought they were developing this land. I didn’t know they were farming it.”
I stepped to the side so I could look down the rows; they were straight and they were long. “So whose land is this? The people who want to buy your property?”
“Who, Redtail?” Nola slowly shook her head. “I called them about something a few months ago. They said it wasn’t theirs. It used to be Mr. Rudner’s, but he died four years ago. It’s changed hands a few times since then. The banks that owned it have changed hands, too. I don’t know who owns it now.”
I turned to Moose. “You went over that fence?”
With a grin, he jumped up and hooked his fingers through the fence. Scrambling up to the top, he swung his legs over it and scrambled halfway down the other side before jumping to the ground.
Nola looked stricken. “Moose! Get back here, right now!”
Instead, he ran over to the nearest row and pulled an ear off one of the stalks.
“Moose!” she scolded. “Now!”
Moose galloped back, still grinning. He tossed the ear to me over the fence, then clambered after it, repeating his earlier maneuver and dropping to the ground right in front of us.
I handed the ear to Nola. She gingerly pulled back the leaves, just enough to see an inch or so of the corn. Then she held it up for us both to see. Instead of firm white or yellow or blue, the kernels were bloated and puffy and a sickly gray.
“So what does this mean?” I asked.
Moose shrugged. Nola’s brow furrowed.
“I mean, if whatever is wrong with your corn is that much worse on this corn, does that mean this is where it came from?”
“Yeah,” Moose said, turning to Nola. “It could, right? I mean, if it’s a fungus or disease, it could have spread from here.”
She nodded slowly.
“And if it’s a pollen drift issue,” he continued, “it could definitely be coming from here.”
As he said it, a slight breeze picked up. Nola turned to look the way we had come, in the direction of her own corn. “It might.”
Moose held up the ear of corn and looked at it suspiciously. “Probably some fucked-up, tasteless, last-for-six months, shelf-stable, herbicide-resistant, GMO crap.”
Nola looked at me, then at Moose. “You think?”
Moose shrugged. I didn’t bother. It was obvious I had no idea.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “If it is, they’re not allowed to have it within a hundred and fifty feet of the nearest crops.”
“So what does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that’s a big-time violation.”
“So what are we going to do now?” Moose asked.
Nola thought for a second. “About this? I don’t know. But I need a drink.”
21
By the time we got back to Nola’s porch, the sky was a deep blue with a spray of bright pink clouds rapidly turning to gray. Nola went inside for beers, leaving Moose and me on the porch. He looked tired, but satisfied with himself.
“Pretty good call,” I said, “checking next door for that funky corn.”
He smiled. “I don’t know what the connection is, but I’ve been waiting for something bad from those guys since they took over the place.”
“Who?”
“Whoever owns that land.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just a vibe, I guess. But when a shadowy corporation moves in next door and plants these huge steroid hedges, it doesn’t seem right.”
“Shadowy corporation? I thought Nola said it was a bank.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it is. And maybe they had nothing to do with any of it. Maybe I just fucked up.”
“But you’re pretty sure you didn’t, aren’t you?”
He stretched and yawned. “I was.”
Nola came out with a tray of sandwiches and beers. In the time she had been gone, the sky had darkened to a royal blue.
“You were what?” she asked.
“Hoping you were bringing out sandwiches.” He picked one up and took a small bite.
“Thanks,” I said, as she handed me a sandwich. I was afraid it would be grilled tofu with arugula, but it was thick-sliced ham and thin-sliced Swiss with mustard, and it was delicious. I ate half the sandwich in two bites, washing it down with half my beer.
Nola nibbled at her sandwich, staring at a spot on the floor. I moved my foot into her line of sight and tapped it, prompting her to look up at me.
I gave her a smile. “So what’s next?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. First off, I need to find out who owns that land. Find out what they’re doing over there.”
“How are you going to do that?” Moose asked, stifling another yawn.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I tried looking online, but I didn’t get very far. The county’s website is not very good, and it’s hard to tell what’s what because so many parcels have been consolidated and reconsolidated, and they all seem to be owned by holding companies with no contact information other than a post office box. I wish I could just go over there and ask.”
“And you can’t?” I asked. It seemed weird to me that you wouldn’t know who owned the land next door, but it wasn’t like I knew the names of anybody who lived on the same floor as my apartment.
Nola shook her head. “Not really. Sounds crazy, I know, but I don’t even know what their address is, or how to get onto the property to ask them. And it’s probably changed hands half a dozen times.”
“That’s what I’m talking about with these developers,” Moose said. “It might not look like it, but piece by piece they’re buying up the whole town.”
“So what’s next, then?” I asked again.
As Nola paused to think about it, her phone rang inside the house.
Moose sat up, looking suddenly awake. “Want me to get that?”
“I got it,” she replied, getting up to go inside.
Moose and I exchanged a look in the gathering darkness.
“Hello?” we heard her saying. “Hello?”
Moose shook his head, his eyes angry and frustrated.
Nola turned on the porch light as she came back out, but she wouldn’t look at either of us.
“Another wrong number?” Moose asked sarcastically.
She gave him a dirty look in reply.
“I know your man Barney Fife is useless,” I said, “but you need to report this, get it on record.”
“Just drop it, okay?” she said in a weary, pleading tone.
I didn’t think I should, but I could see her pale eyes in the darkness, and I knew I would do whateve
r she asked.
“It’s crazy,” Moose said.
“Drop it,” she snapped in a tone I was glad wasn’t directed at me.
Moose put the last of his sandwich into his mouth, and I could see his jaw working hard in the moonlight. As soon as it stopped, he tilted his beer and drained it.
“I’m beat,” he said flatly. “Thanks for the sandwich.”
We both said good night, watching as he crossed the street in the moonlight and went inside the house, letting the screen door slap behind him.
“He’s right, you know,” I said.
“Don’t you start. Please.”
I took a quiet sip of beer, and so did she.
“I appreciate your help today,” she said. “It meant a lot to me. Thanks.”
“My pleasure. So how are you going to find out who’s next door?”
“I don’t know really. You’re a detective; what would you suggest?”
“If I was in Philly, I’d have my sources. Out here, I don’t know. Probably start in the hall of records. Look through the real-estate transfers.”
She nodded, thinking about that. “I’m thinking tomorrow afternoon, after I meet with the caterers, I’m going to get in my car and make a left onto Bayberry, and keep making lefts. I figure I’ll stop at every house on the left hand side of the road, make every left turn I can, and eventually, I’ll either find the entrance to the place, if there is one, or go in a circle and end up back at my house.”
“Door to door? Really?”
She shrugged and nodded, but she looked a little apprehensive.
It sounded crazy, but there was a certain old-fashioned police-work angle to it that I liked. “Tell you what; if you want, I can go with you. In case you run into any nut jobs.”
She laughed. “That’s a nice offer, but I took up a lot of your time today. Don’t you have stuff you need to do?”
“Actually, I have some … time off from work. Frank’s funeral is on Wednesday, but apart from that I’m open.” Technically, I was supposed to be finding some of Frank’s papers for Bricker, and there was no telling what kind of mature and healthy emotional processing that could provoke.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” It was the perfect combination of tasks that I would try desperately to put off as a matter of course.
I knew she didn’t want to ask me for any more help, but the relief on her face was unmistakable. “You’re a heck of a guy.”
“I keep telling people. Can I ask you a question?”
“Hmm. I guess so.”
“What’s the deal with you and Simpkins, anyway?”
She sighed and looked down. “You saw him with his gaggle of adoring fans, right?”
“I did. And I saw them vanish from his consciousness when he saw you. Did you two date?”
“No, no, no. Honestly. When we were at Cornell, he was very, um … attentive. I just thought he was being very conscientious.” I could practically hear her blushing, and I smiled in the darkness.
“So?”
“Senior year he was one of my teachers. Even for grad students, fraternizing with students you are teaching is a big no-no.”
“So what happened?”
“The same time I finished my degree, he got his Ph.D. and the job at Pine Crest. He knew I was looking for a small patch of farmland, so he calls me and tells me this parcel is for sale.… It was a really good price. Not too far from the city. College nearby.”
“I was wondering how you both ended up in the same town.”
“It wasn’t until I bought the place that he made his move.”
“How’d that go?”
She laughed. “Not the way he’d hoped.”
“I see. Any tips on how to avoid the same fate?”
“Hmm. First, try not to be a schmuck.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” she said with a smile, standing and collecting plates and bottles. “You have to be very, very patient.”
22
I was exhausted as I got into bed, but an hour later, I was still awake. Partly it was the sound of Moose snoring in the back bedroom. Partly, it was images of Nola drifting through my head—her pale eyes in the darkness, her shy smile as she asked me to come with her to see Simpkins. And yes, her drenched T-shirt at the diner.
But when it got really late, when I finally drove those thoughts from my mind, that’s when it hit me that my mother was dead, and so was Frank.
Lying in her house, in the quiet and the dark, I could feel the presence of her absence, a cold, hollow ache that I’d been desperately trying to avoid. Memories of my childhood came back—the days before Frank was on the scene, the days when it was just my mom and me: trips to the beach, meetings with teachers, an awkward talk about condoms, lying on a blanket in the backyard looking for shooting stars. Christmas morning with my dad.
That last one blindsided me, so stunningly vivid I gasped. There was my dad, Christmas morning, bleary-eyed and unshaven, wearing his plaid flannel robe, a coffee cup in one hand, his other arm around my mom. They were both looking down at me as I opened a present, the tree blinking and twinkling to my right.
I hadn’t thought about that moment in years, but I remembered it clearly. I had just unwrapped the remote control stunt car I’d been wanting since early the previous January. The smell of coffee and bacon hung in the air, and I looked up at my mom and my dad, and I thought to myself that life couldn’t possibly get any better.
As it turned out, I was right.
The hollow ache opened into a chasm, a deep sorrow I hadn’t felt since I had started covering it up at my father’s funeral.
It occurred to me that just as Frank’s death meant one less connection to a time when my mother was alive, losing her meant losing a connection to my dad that I had been holding on to for twenty-five years. I missed her because I missed her, but I missed her even more because I missed him, too.
My throat felt tight and my eyes felt moist, but I didn’t cry, because I don’t. Maybe I should have.
The last time I looked at the clock, it was just after two o’clock. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but when the phone rang at three, I woke up with a start.
The caller I.D. said “N. Watkins,” and I glanced out the window before I answered.
For a brief instant I pictured her lying in the dark, unable to sleep because she was thinking of me.
“Hey,” I said into the phone.
“There’s someone outside!” she whispered tersely.
I swung my feet onto the floor and sat up. “What?”
“There’s someone outside my house. I heard them.”
“Sit tight, I’ll be right over.”
I pulled on my jeans and my shoes, and I grabbed my gun from under the mattress. Five seconds later I was crossing the street in the darkness. I circled the house once, then tapped on the glass of the front door. A couple of seconds later, Nola’s face appeared in the window, eyes wide. Then the door opened.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, putting a hand on my chest.
“What did you hear?” I whispered.
“I heard someone outside. I thought it was a raccoon or something, but it sounded like a person. Then I heard someone on the front porch. That’s when I called you.”
“Wait here,” I told her. “Lock the door and don’t open it unless it’s me.”
She nodded and closed the door.
I waited until I heard her lock it, then I went back down the steps and had a more thorough look around. I circled the house once again, then checked the lock on her shed. I checked the two main fields behind her house—crisscrossing them a couple of times and pausing in each one, then in front of the thick green Siberian elm, listening for any sounds of intruders. Some of the plants were bent or broken, like someone had walked across them, but there was no way to tell whether the damage was new or whether the culprit had been a deer or a person.
When I returned to Nola’s porch, her fac
e appeared in the window before I had a chance to tap on the glass. I nodded and motioned that she should open the door.
“Did you find anything?” she whispered.
I shook my head. “Not really. Maybe some plants were flattened, but I don’t know if that means anything.”
“Well, I definitely heard something,” she said defensively.
“You’re sure it wasn’t a deer or a raccoon?”
She gave me a look. “It wasn’t a raccoon.”
“Okay.” She seemed like she didn’t want me to leave but she didn’t want to invite me in. “Do you want me to stay?”
She gave me a dubious look.
“Downstairs, I mean.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll be all right. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
“Absolutely.”
As I turned to go, she said, “Doyle,” and reached out to put her hand on my chest again. “Thanks.”
I started to say it was nothing, but then she got up on her tiptoes and put a soft kiss on my cheek. I stayed quiet as she smiled and closed the door.
23
When I got up in the morning, I celebrated the fact that I had coffee by drinking a lot of coffee. By nine-thirty I was fidgety and restless. I wasn’t supposed to meet Nola until noon, so I decided to do some sight-seeing. I got into the car and drove for fifteen minutes, until I found a small street called Maple Lane. A few minutes later I pulled over in front of a driveway with crime-scene tape stretched between a lamppost and a small tree.
As I got out of the car, I was hit by that familiar odor of burnt plastic and wet ashtray. The smell made my skin prickle. For an instant I thought about the four people who had died, and how, but I chased that thought out of my head. I ducked under the crime-scene tape and walked up the driveway, fifty yards, to a concrete slab parking area next to a black rectangle surrounded by weeds and cinders. The building had been small but, reduced to two blackened dimensions, it seemed tiny.
There was so little debris I would have thought it had been cleared away if not for the tangle of pipes. But it was all there, just burned down to ashes.
Surrounding the house was the melted remnants of a vinyl fence. Careful not to touch anything, I walked in a circle, between the melted vinyl fence and the charred black remains of the house.
