by Jeff Shelby
He pulled the pipe from the corner of his mouth. “Morning, Ms. Day. Hope I'm not disturbing you.”
I shook my head. “Not at all. Just getting ready to start my day. If I can figure out where to start it.”
He chuckled and let his gaze sweep the farm. “It's a big place, isn't it?”
“That it is.”
He nodded, then gestured down the gravel road that led to the back of the property. “I was hoping I might be able to get a look in your bungalow. Finish up my report.”
“Of course,” I said, coming down the steps. “Let's go have a look.”
“I just want to make sure we get a thorough picture of it,” he said as we walked toward it. “Make sure I didn't miss anything yesterday.”
I wasn't really sure what he’d done the day before, but I didn't want to tell him how to do his job.
I unlocked the door to the bungalow and pushed the door open, then stepped back to let him pass.
The interior of the bungalow looked different to me, but I couldn’t place why. I assumed because we'd moved boxes yesterday for the medical examiner, but the room was just giving me a different vibe than it had the day before.
The sheriff was sucking on his pipe again and looking around the corner of the room where we'd discovered the bones. He stared at the spot for a long time, then he looked up one wall, then down another.
“I suppose I oughta take some pictures,” he mumbled.
“Probably,” I said, though I didn’t think he was actually looking for a response. In truth, he should have taken pictures yesterday, of the actual bones and how they’d been positioned. The ME had done that, so maybe he shared his pictures with the sheriff? Maybe he was also a deputy? I had no idea.
Sheriff Lewis reached into the pocket of his uniform pants and pulled out a fairly sizable smartphone. He fumbled with it for a moment, then craned his neck closer to the screen. He jabbed at it with his finger, frowning at it. Then he swiped his finger across it. He finally nodded and started tapping on the screen.
“These newfangled phones just seem way more complicated than they need to be,” he said.
I didn’t want to admit that I felt the same way. I had my smartphone and even though it felt like I’d mastered its functions, I was pretty sure I was only aware of ten percent of what it was actually capable of doing.
“I remember ol' Len telling me he'd never get one.” He chuckled. “Then he ended up with two for some reason.”
“Len?”
He looked up from his screen. “Len Konrath. The man whose farm you now own.”
“Oh,” I said. The name definitely rang a bell, but he had been listed as Leonard on the paperwork. “I never met him during the sale.”
“Friend of mine,” he said. “Good man, Len is.”
“I'm sure,” I said.
He held the phone up and aimed it at the corner, jabbing again at the screen. Then he frowned. “Hmm. Thing doesn't want to take pictures.”
“Can I help?”
“Oh, no, I'll figure it out,” he said, waving me off. “I always do.”
“Do you need to do any dusting?”
“Dusting?” His brow wrinkled. “In here? I don't need to clean the area.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I meant dusting for, like, fingerprints or something like that.”
He thought for a moment, then made a face. “Nah, probably not. I doubt there's anything to find, anyway.”
While I didn't feel endangered in any way, his crime-solving skills seemed pretty much nonexistent. Which left me feeling pretty irritated. Again.
I started to ask him another question, but my own phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw Laura's name on the screen. “Excuse me, Sheriff. It's my daughter.”
“Not a problem,” he said, still just staring at the walls as if he were in some sort of trance. Maybe he, too, had picked up on the fact that the vibe was a little different. Or maybe it was just me imagining things. I was good at that.
I turned away from him and walked toward the other end of the bungalow. “Good morning,” I said, trying to quell my enthusiasm. I was thrilled that Laura had actually decided to reach out on her own. That felt like progress. Maybe she was getting over her anger and hurt feelings.
“Good morning,” my daughter said. “I have a few minutes before the kids show up so I'm checking in on you. To make sure you haven't been eaten by a cow or something.”
“Cows don't eat humans,” I corrected her. But I was smiling. If she was joking, she was in a better mood. Maybe her resentment about my move was finally behind us. “You know this. You’re a teacher, for god’s sake.”
“Fine. A tractor, then.”
“Tractors are inanimate objects, so—”
“Mother, you know what I mean,” she said, exasperated.
I did, of course, know what she meant, but I also considered it my job to exasperate her.
“I am fine,” I said. “I'm here with the sheriff.”
The line buzzed for a moment. “The what?”
I covered my mouth with my hand. Why on earth had I just blurted that out?
“Mom? What did you say? Who is there?”
I swallowed. “The sheriff.”
The line buzzed again. “Mother.”
“Daughter?”
“What exactly is going on?”
I watched Sheriff Lewis shuffle around the corner, not doing much of anything. “It's really hard to say,” I told her. That, in fact, was a truthful statement.
“Let me be more specific,” Laura said. “Why is the sheriff there?”
I sighed. “You sure you want to know?”
“Oh, god.” And then, “Yes. Tell me now.”
It would do no good to hide it from her. She was like a bloodhound, relentless in her pursuit of information once a tidbit had been dangled in front of her. Maybe she should have been the one to work for a private investigator, not her mother.
I stared out the window. Well, I tried, but it was so thick with dirt and grime that it was really hard to see much of anything. “I might have found some bones.”
“Some what?”
While the sheriff fumbled around in the corner, I haltingly explained to her what had occurred the day before.
“And I'm just finding out about this now?” she said when I was done. “Why didn't you call me right away and tell me?”
“Probably because I knew you'd freak out in exactly the way you're freaking out now,” I told her. “It's fine. It's under control. I'm sure there's a good explanation.”
“For old bones? When has there ever been a good explanation for that?”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
“I’m worried. I think you need to do more. Move out or something.” There was a pause. “Come home.”
I smiled, a little sadly. What my daughter didn’t realize was that I was home.
“I know you’re concerned, and I appreciate that,” I said, trying to be patient. “But this is my life now. You're going to have to get used to that. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I managed to call the police and everything.”
“I know you are,” she responded. “But that doesn't mean I'll worry any less, and it doesn't mean I'm happy that you're sharing that farm with a dead body.”
“Technically, it was just bones.”
“Mother! You know what I mean!”
I stifled a chuckle. “Yes, I do. And I appreciate your concern. I really do. But you'll have to trust me. Everything's fine.”
She sighed. “If you say so.”
I waited for more: more argument, more cajoling, more concern. When it didn’t come, I didn’t know whether to rejoice or worry. Laura was not one to drop things, but I wasn’t about to drag things out if she was done with the discussion. And from what I could tell, she was.
“What are they doing about the bones?” she asked.
I turned back toward Sheriff Lewis. He was squatted down in the cor
ner with his phone out, jabbing his finger once again at the screen. He lost his balance and teetered over on his side, but it was in slow motion, like one of the Weeble Wobble toys from the 70s. For a minute, I worried that he’d broken something; I mean, he was pretty old. But he pushed himself back up and struggled to his feet, getting his hat back straight on his head.
I looked away and shook my head. “Investigating. They're investigating.”
TEN
After I hung up with my daughter, the sheriff informed me that he was finished with whatever work he'd done and that he'd be in touch. I had a million questions for him but since he hadn’t demonstrated any indication of having either competency or information, I’d just nodded and escorted him back to the main house and the driveway.
I was still at a loss as to where to start with my mile-long To Do list, so I decided that putting off the house projects made far more sense than procrastinating over the errands I still needed to run. So after spending five minutes getting myself ready, I gathered up some paperwork from the living room and headed into town.
The downtown area of Latney was just as charming as I remembered. It was only three blocks long, the main road lined with little shops and businesses. St. Simon’s was visible down a side street, its white steeple blinding in the morning sunshine, and more streets splintered off the main road, filled with older homes on sprawling, well-maintained lots. I drove past a hardware store, the post office, a boutique of some kind, the town’s only restaurant, and a few other businesses before finally pulling into a parking space in front of The Bank of Latney, a stately, two-story brick building.
Bells chimed somewhere in the lobby of the bank when I pushed through the double glass doors. A woman sitting at a small desk near the entrance sat up a little straighter and smiled at me with coffee-stained teeth. “May I help you?”
I tucked the manila folder beneath my arm. “I'd like to speak with someone about opening an account.”
“Are you already a customer?”
“No. I just moved to the area.”
She squinted at me. She had a beehive of brown hair and looked to be nearly the same age as the sheriff. I was beginning to wonder if anyone in the town was under the age of 40. “You're the young woman that bought Len's farm, aren't you?”
“I bought the farm, yes. Not sure about the young part.”
She picked up the phone to her left. “Young to me, dear. I'm Trudy, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Trudy.”
“Same, dear,” she said. She shifted her focus to the phone. “Walter, we have a potential new customer here.” She nodded. “Alrighty.” She hung up the phone and smiled at me. “Walter will be here shortly.”
I had no idea who Walter was but assumed this was a good thing. “Terrific, thank you.”
“You're welcome, dear,” she said. She leaned in conspiratorially. “And Walter's a bit of a blowhard, but his heart's in the right place.” She winked at me. “Don't hold it against us.”
“I promise I won't,” I told her, smiling. “And thanks for the warning.”
She nodded. “You bet. You can have a seat right over there behind you.”
I wandered over to the deep-seated leather sofa and sank down. A mahogany coffee table was positioned in front of it and matching end tables flanked the sides. The top of the coffee table was covered with financial magazines and pens with the bank's name on them. I thought I spied a couple of employees poking their heads out of their cubicles, trying to look at me, but it may have just been my own paranoia. At least they confirmed that there were younger folks in town; neither looked to be over thirty.
After a few minutes, a tall man wearing wire-rimmed glasses made his way toward me, a large smile spread across his face. “Are you our new customer?”
I stood. “Well, I hope to be.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, extending a hand. “I'm Walter Rey.”
“Rainy Day,” I said, letting his hand swallow up mine.
He looked like the politicians I was used to seeing on the Hill—perfectly trimmed, slicked back hair, tanned skin, immaculately dressed in a custom-tailored business suit.
“Rainy Day,” he repeated. “I assume you're here to put your money away for...a rainy day.”
It was a terrible joke, but one that I'd learned to tolerate over the years with a smile on my face. “Something like that.”
He laughed as though I'd found it funnier than I had, then waved me back in the direction he'd come from.
I followed him down a short hallway and he stepped aside so I could enter the office first. I took one of the two chairs on the right side of a standard office desk, which was cluttered with papers and several photographs. A window behind me opened out onto a small park area that I hadn’t noticed before.
Walter Rey settled himself into an oversized leather chair and laid his hands on the desk. “So, Rainy, what can we do for you today?”
“For starters, I'd like to open a checking account,” I said. “And I guess I'd like some information on opening a savings account, as well.”
“We can do both,” he said, tapping his fingers against the desk. “We are always happy to help out folks new to Latney.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you already know who I am?”
He pursed his lips and his fingers tapped the desk quicker. “Oh. Well. My wife actually told me that she met you the other day when she stopped by to say hello.”
I thought for a moment. “Sophia?”
“The one and only,” he said, nodding. “She told me about you being out there all alone at Len's old place. So I wondered if we might be seeing you.”
“I see,” I said, feeling momentarily guilty for having assumed he'd been spying on me, too.
He swiveled in his chair and pulled out the keyboard beneath the flat screen monitor. “I heard you had a bit of a scare out there yesterday.”
And the guilt was gone. “Oh, did you?”
His fingers moved over the keyboard. “Something about a body, I believe.”
I didn't say anything.
“Heard the sheriff was out there.”
I pressed my lips together.
He finally glanced at my direction. “But maybe we should just stick to why you're here.”
“I like that idea,” I told him.
Thirty minutes later, I had a checking account with no minimum balance and a savings account that gave me what I needed. Walter was very nice in going through all of the particulars, setting up a temporary check card for me until my permanent one arrived in the mail, and making sure I knew that there were lots of other options available to me if I wanted to move more of my money into The Bank of Latney. I did have lots more money to move, but I wasn't ready to do that until I saw proof that they could take care of what I'd given them.
Call me old-fashioned.
Walter rapped a fist against his desktop. “Well, I think that about covers it then. And if you have any issues whatsoever, you feel free to call me directly.” He slid a card across the desk. “Has both my personal number and an email address on there.”
I took the card and put it in my folder. “Thank you very much.”
“And I apologize if I was a little forward about you being the new owner out there at Len's and about whatever occurred there yesterday,” he said, frowning. “News gets passed around pretty quickly here in Latney, and I sometimes forget that not everyone's used to that.”
“No apologies necessary,” I said. I appreciated the sentiment.
“People like to talk about anything out of the ordinary that happens around here,” Walter said. He grinned, a little sheepishly. “Those of us who have been here for forever, sometimes forget that those of you who are new around here might not be aware of that. Or appreciate it.”
“Do a lot of things out of the ordinary happen in Latney?”
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. His white shirt was so starched I thought his hands might
bounce right off of it. “I wouldn't say a lot. But, you know, we get our fair share of things that don't always make sense.”
“Like?”
He thought for a moment. “Clancy O'Dell's uncle disappeared a number of years ago. Family owns a farm a little out to the west and one night he just didn't come home.”
“Disappeared?”
“Never heard from since. Been twenty years now and no one’s heard a peep.”
“That's not good.” I wondered if Clancy’s uncle might have ended up in my bungalow. But would he—I mean, his bones—just sit there for…decades?
“Well, he was sort of an ornery old fellow, so there wasn't too much of a ruckus,” Walter said, adjusting his glasses. “His family wasn't too terribly concerned. Some cows were stolen awhile back, too.”
“Cows?”
“Yes, ma'am. From the Becker farm about twenty minutes from here. Roland went out one morning and a dozen of his cattle were gone. No trace of them.”
“Oh, my.” I wasn’t sure how someone could steal a head of cattle without leaving any clue. Unless they’d been beamed up by aliens.
“He spent a couple of days looking for them, but he finally just gave up and bought a few new ones. I believe the sheriff looked into it, but never found anything.”
That, I believed.
“So people like to get worked up when something out of the ordinary happens,” Walter said. “Latney is a fairly quiet place, so anytime there's a wrinkle, people like to talk about it. And I would imagine that once people found out about whatever happened at your place, they got a little excited.”
I thought about what Declan had said about small town life, how people were set in their ways. And now Walter was telling me that they were also up in my business. I shouldn't have expected that whatever happened on my farm would stay on my farm; that was naiveté on my part. I’d bought the farm because I wanted a change of pace, and it looked like adjusting to gossip was going to be a part of that new pace, too.
I stood. “I appreciate all of your help, Mr. Rey.”
He pushed himself out of the chair, straightening his tie as he did so. “Call me, Walter. And you're very welcome. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if I can be of assistance.”
