by Wendy Tyson
Megan stared at the screen, at the exchanges between Otto and Ted. She reread the last four. They were short and hardly sweet, but telling.
“Emily, I don’t think in the end your father thought Otto was the one trolling him.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She bent closer to the screen. “He says, ‘this needs to stop’ to Otto. And he accuses him of being complicit.”
“Complicit implies something larger than one person.”
“A conspiracy?”
“Maybe. Something illegal—something involving more than just Otto.” Megan pointed to a line in the last email. It seemed innocuous at first glance. “See here?”
Emily read the sentence aloud: “‘You must have figured it out by now.’” Emily looked at her questioningly. “Figured what out?”
“I don’t know—I guess that’s the question. Are there any other exchanges between Otto and your dad?”
With a glance at her sleeping daughter, Emily pushed the computer closer to Megan. “I saw these and was afraid to look further. Go for it. Please.”
Megan spent the next half hour reading through Ted’s emails, feeling very much like a snoop. She skipped everything personal, looking for more information on what transpired between Otto and Kuhl. While there was no smoking gun, there was evidence that they planned to meet—and talk.
“Here.” Megan moved back so Emily could get closer to the laptop. “It looks like your dad and Otto met the day before Otto died.” The same day they were arguing at my café, Megan thought.
Emily read the email. It was an innocuous exchange between the two men with the subject line “Oktoberfest,” but it mentioned meeting at the café to discuss the matter further.
“Only your father knows what went down between them.”
“And I have no idea where he is.” Emily rubbed her eyes. “This doesn’t look good for him, does it?”
Megan thought about the events: nasty online reviews, emails, allegations that Otto—his only real Winsome competitor—was part of it, the arguments at the café, Otto’s death, and then Ted’s disappearance. No, it didn’t look good.
“Do I have to turn this over to the police?” Emily asked.
“Not if they haven’t asked. There’s nothing in there to suggest guilt. But you shouldn’t erase or destroy anything in case they do get a warrant. That could be obstruction of justice.”
Emily nodded. “I don’t feel safe at home,” she said after a long minute. “Not with the baby and all.” She looked down at her scrubs. “Last night we slept in my office.”
“You’re welcome to stay at the farm. We have a guest room.”
Emily’s face shone with gratitude.
“Oh, thank you, Megan. We’ll be okay. My dad still has Grandma’s old property across town. The house is rundown, but the plumbing works. I’ll stay there for a few days, get my head straight.”
Megan nodded. “If you change your mind, call.” She paused, listening to the sound of trucks idling at a nearby business. The brewery smelled stuffy, mildewy. No place for a baby. “And if you do get wind of something more, or if you hear from your dad, please call the police. You can contact Chief Bobby King directly.”
Emily agreed, although her expression remained noncommittal.
“Let’s leave together,” Megan said. “I’d feel better if I knew you and your daughter were safely in your car.”
They walked outside. Emily had taken her father’s business laptop with her. She had the baby under one arm and the laptop and papers under the other. Megan helped her into her car.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Megan asked, hearing the lameness of the question even as it left her lips.
Emily answered through the open window. “How can I be? Either my father is guilty of hurting someone and he’s now dead or on the lam, which is unthinkable, or he is in danger, running from someone who wants to hurt him and his business. In either case, I’m terrified.”
Softly, Megan said, “You really need to have this conversation with King. Show him what you found.”
“How can I go to the police? I wouldn’t know what to say. All I have that’s real is a father who left and a bunch of emails that don’t tell us much at all.”
“You’re feeling unsafe. That’s something.”
Emily glanced back at Lily, still sleeping despite her mother’s angst. “I will feel safest at my grandmother’s old house.” She sighed. “If I go to King, he’s liable to jump to the conclusion that my dad is guilty. If there are other suspects, he’ll be focused on Dad instead of them. Leaving Dad in danger.”
Megan nodded. She had a point.
Emily started the car. “I’ll go looking for Dad again after work. He’s the one person who can clear things up.”
Megan pulled out onto Smythe Road a minute after Emily. She’d been listening to the two voicemails from Clover begging her to stop by the café. Alvaro was upset about the quality of the neighboring farm’s goat cheese, and the café had a slew of customers, the first of the tourists arriving for the Oktoberfest celebration and leaf peeping their way around the region.
Megan approached the first and only stoplight between the brewery and the main part of town and slowed to a stop. She saw Emily’s car go through the yellow light. A gray Honda Accord with Jersey plates was behind her, and it too sped up to get through the light. Megan waited and watched, thinking about Emily. Mother deceased, father gone, recently divorced. Now it was her and her daughter against the world. Would be nice if she could at least count on the folks in her hometown. But would they come through?
The light turned green. Smythe Road was straight and flat. Megan was accelerating through the intersection, past a construction crew, when she noticed Emily turn onto a street ahead of her into a neighborhood area. The Honda turned too. Megan pressed harder on the gas pedal, but by the time she reached the spot where Emily had turned, there was no sign of either car and too many avenues down which either could have gone.
Megan pulled over and noted what she could remember about the Honda in her phone. Couldn’t hurt to have the information.
Just in case.
Seventeen
By Wednesday afternoon, Porter and Clay had the barn cleaned out and ready for tables. The yard was mowed and raked, weeds whacked, and most of the remaining beds had been turned over and planted with cover crops or mulched. Three Port-o-Potties were expected to arrive the next morning, and Bibi had purchased bags of Halloween candy and treats for the kids—despite Megan’s admonishments about too much sugar. They each had their assigned roles. Clover would give walking tours, Clay would drive the hay truck, Porter would play security guard, Bibi would see to sales of baked goods, and Megan would sell and manage the vegetables. And the goats and dogs would do what they did best: be adorable.
Despite her trailing annoyance at Ophelia, Megan had to admit things had come together quite nicely. Clay had been pushing for a wood-fired pizza oven in the big barn and a family pizza farm night during the summer. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. Perhaps next year.
She caught Clay in one of the smaller greenhouses, pulling weeds. He smiled when he saw her. She told him her thoughts on the pizza farm and that smile broadened.
“Clover will be excited. We had one at the commune. Alvaro makes amazing wood-fired pizza—if you can convince him to do it.” He stood, wiping hair out of his eyes with the back of a gloved hand. “Speaking of Alvaro, who will be manning the store and café on Saturday while we’re here?”
“I gave Alvaro the morning off. I’m closing the café.”
“The Breakfast Club won’t be happy.”
“I don’t think we’ve seen much of that crowd. Not since Otto.”
Clay cocked his head. “I guess that makes sense. Must be tough on them.” He shook his head. “Speaking of Otto, Lana stopped by to see you yesterda
y. You weren’t here. I thought maybe she called you afterward.”
“No, I haven’t heard from her. Did she say what she wanted?”
“Only that it was important.”
“Hmm. Okay, thanks.” Megan turned to leave, but thought better of it. She decided to share with Clay the discovery of the knife on Potter Hill and her concern that someone had been watching her from the woods again the other night. As she expected, he was angry.
“Dammit, Megan.” His hands balled into fists, his face turned the color of beets. “Did you tell King?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“What can the police do? It’s not illegal to hike.”
“So he didn’t take it seriously.”
Megan didn’t respond.
Clay gritted his teeth. “I don’t like this.”
“What would constitute ‘this’?”
“All of it. None of it. Otto. The person on Potter Hill.”
Megan weighed what to tell him. She decided to share her concerns about Kuhl and her conversations with Emily. It would help to get another perspective.
Megan told him everything in one big jumble, relieved to be sharing this burden with someone else. She explained the conversation she’d overheard at the café, the missing sweater vest, and the found button. She added Emily’s concerns and the email exchanges between Otto and Kuhl. The red slowly drained from Clay’s face, replaced with a sickly gray.
“Are you okay?” Megan asked him.
Clay looked around the greenhouse. His eyes rested on the doorway. With a resigned sigh, he said, “I need to show you something.”
Megan didn’t like the sudden look of distress on Clay’s face. “What?”
“I may be able to fill in one of the missing puzzle pieces.”
It took Clay twenty minutes to find what he wanted to show her, and that twenty minutes involved sorting through three large garbage bags’ worth of farm detritus from the open house cleanup initiative. He finally pulled a plastic Walmart bag out of the bottom of one of them. It was wet and muddy. He looked inside, grimaced, and opened it for her to see.
She knew immediately what it was. Gray wool material sat balled up the bottom, along with some sodden paper towels. The vest Otto had been wearing the morning he died.
“Where did you find it?”
“In the creek bed. The bag had snagged on a rock.”
The creek bed was tucked inside the woods on the edge of their property. Thinking of the hiker/stalker, Megan said, “So you don’t think someone placed it there purposefully?”
Clay closed the bag. They were by the barn, and Gunther and Sadie were sniffing madly at the garbage bag Clay had just rummaged through. Gunther turned his attention to the Walmart bag. Clay held it up higher, out of the dog’s reach.
“If I had to guess, I’d say no. I think someone tossed it into the creek farther up, where it’s deeper, and it came downstream and caught on the rock.” His frown deepened. “But clearly someone was trying to get rid of it.”
Megan pulled her cell out of her pocket. She started dialing. King answered immediately. And she told him what Clay had found.
“Is the button missing?” he asked
“It’s compressed and wet in a bag, so I can’t tell. Do you want us to touch it?”
“No. I was hoping it was plainly visible.”
“It’s not. And neither is blood. At least from what I can see.”
“Vance had bled profusely. That could mean it was removed before Vance hit his head. Or maybe you just can’t see the blood—the stream may have washed it out.” King paused and said something to someone in the room with him. When he came back, he barked, “Sit tight, Megan. We’ll be there soon.”
King and the red-haired officer arrived at Washington Acres in record time. King took possession of the bag. Donning gloves, he opened it and laid the vest out on a plastic sheet in the back of his car. As suspected, a button was missing. The right pocket was also ripped. Otherwise, it looked clean of blood, but Megan knew it would be sent to the lab to test for any trace evidence. She also knew the police would have to determine whether a crime had been committed on the farm property, or whether evidence had simply arrived at the farm via the creek.
Megan shared Clay’s theory that the bag had floated downstream and snagged on a boulder in the creek.
“Sounds about right,” King said. “But I’d feel better if we take a look around. We’ll need Clay to show us exactly where he found the bag.” He glanced at Clay. “Can you do that?”
“Sure can.”
The police were done nearly an hour later.
“Nothing,” King said to Megan. She wasn’t surprised. “A forensics team is on the way, just to be sure we didn’t miss something, but I think Clay’s theory is correct. Someone tried to dispose of this by tossing it in the water.”
Megan said, “The fact that the button is gone, the pocket is ripped, and that you found the missing button at the solar farm says Otto likely didn’t discard the sweater himself.”
“That’s right.” The police chief looked pained.
“We’re not going to say anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. To the media, I mean.”
“I’m thinking about Kuhl. Given what you overheard, I think we need to put extra effort into finding him.”
Guilt nagged at Megan. She didn’t want to be the one to tell King about the emails Emily had shared, but nor did she want to mislead the police by staying silent. Besides, those emails could show that Ted was innocent, and that he’d stumbled upon something more sinister. And if he’d done something wrong? Justice was the only right course of action.
“I think you should talk to Ted’s daughter,” Megan said. She told him about their discussion earlier that week.
“You should have come to me then.”
“Why? So you could have told me I was being paranoid and overly sensitive?”
King had the decency to blush. “Things have changed since then.”
Megan folded her arms across her chest. “And now I’m telling you.”
“Fair enough.”
Clay and the red-haired officer ambled over. Gunther was following the policeman closely, a wary eye on this new visitor.
“Gunther, down,” Megan said. The dog sat at full attention, waiting for a new command.
“He’s quite a dog,” King said. “Can’t believe it’s the same mutt old man Sauer had.”
“Amazing what can happen when you don’t neglect an animal.”
King looked at Megan sideways. “Still bitter?”
Megan’s eyes widened. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“Suppose so.”
They stood there for a few seconds by the unmarked car. Megan figured she’d come clean about everything she’d noticed recently. She told King about the Honda that had been driving behind Emily. And about Gunther’s chase in the woods a few nights before.
King shook his head and opened his mouth to say something when Megan put up a hand. “I’m telling you what I observed. Now you can’t accuse me of holding back. Take it or leave it—that’s your choice.”
“The dog was spooked? I guess I need to trust your instincts at this point. Gunther’s too.”
“You should have been trusting them all along,” Clay piped in.
“I’ll have someone check out Potter Hill again.” King shook his head. “An older gray Honda, huh?”
Megan read him the notes from her phone.
“We certainly have a bunch of disparate facts and no cohesive theory.”
“Oktoberfest,” Clay said. “I would start there.”
Megan nodded. “Sure feels like that’s the connection.”
“I wonder if we should cancel it,” the uniformed officer murmured.
“And suffer the wrat
h of Ophelia and the committee?” King said jokingly. But Megan could tell he didn’t find this the least bit funny. It was a terrible choice to make—and she didn’t envy him the decision.
Eighteen
It was decided the next day that Oktoberfest would go on. King met with the committee and they agreed to increase security, hiring extra guards for the week of the celebrations. A visit to Potter Hill had turned up nothing, and the Honda seemed to be a dead end. The police, deciding that Ted Kuhl was their prime suspect, expressed hope that whatever had occurred was between two people, and that no further issues should occur during the seven days’ worth of festivities.
Megan wished she shared their optimism.
Friday came and went quickly. Megan, Clay, and Porter set up tables in the barn and hung paper lanterns from the rafters. Bibi’s sweet quick breads and other baked goods were defrosted at the café, and Bibi and Clover arranged them on decorative trays. Alvaro brewed spiced apple cider in large batches. The goat pen was cleaned, the dogs endured the grooming table, and baskets and bushels of vegetables, including greens from the greenhouses, were made ready for public sale. Even Denver lent a hand, helping Clay put together an outdoor pen for Heidi and Dimples, who would be making their first public appearance the next day.
By seven o’clock that night, Megan fell, exhausted, into a chair in the living room. Denver, Clay, and Porter had stayed for dinner, and Bibi—energized by the commotion at the farm—had whipped up a supper of grilled local cheddar on sourdough and homemade minestrone soup.
“Your grandmother could probably make even mushrooms taste good,” Denver said. “I appreciate her touch in the kitchen.”
“We all do,” Megan said. “How did your photo journal turn out?”
“Haven’t seen it yet. Ophelia called me twice today though.”
Megan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”
“She’s a nosy lassie, that one. I tried to avoid her, but my receptionist put her through late this afternoon.” He smiled. “Not sure she was happy with my response.”
