CARBON DATING
Tin Can Mystery #3
Jerusha Jones
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 by Jerusha Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
For more information about Jerusha Jones’s other novels, please visit www.jerushajones.com
Cover design by Elizabeth Berry MacKenney.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOURCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY JERUSHA JONES
CHAPTER 1
Perfection. Absolute perfection in a crisp, slightly chilly, and yet surprisingly un-damp Pacific Northwest sort of way. Indian summer, I think it’s called. There was a contagious air of frolicsome giddiness among the families who had gathered to harvest their own pumpkins, bounce along on the hay wagons pulled by teams of jaunty mules, and try their luck and navigational skills in the corn mazes.
It had been a brilliant stroke of advance planning for my friends and clients, Nash and Denby Fraser, to have planted the pumpkins and corn the previous spring in preparation for an inaugural fall event while they were still polishing the business plan and securing funding for their new venture—Heritage Farms CSA (community supported agriculture).
When we’d first met, Nash had joked that the long-neglected homesteading land-grant parcel now populated by wild Himalayan blackberries, scrub cottonwood trees, well-distributed boulders that had worked up from the soil, and a ramshackle Victorian farmhouse most recently occupied by raccoons and opossums and barn owls was Denby’s dowry, an asset he’d acquired from her family along with his new wife. She hadn’t thought his analogy was a laughing matter—“I come with baggage,” she’d agreed with a shrug—but their shared enthusiasm for returning the plot to its agricultural roots, albeit using modern and organic techniques, was infectious. I’d signed up as one of their first shareholders during the same meeting where they’d hired me to manage their publicity and marketing efforts.
A fellow resident of Marten’s Marina and the teenager I’d been tutoring in cooking, Willow Ratliff, had gotten a weekend job at the farm during the tourist season. She was manning the registration booth for people who wanted to join the CSA. But she was doing an even brisker trade in corn maze tickets.
“What’s your pleasure? Walk in the Park, Brain Surgery, or Rocket Science?” she asked as our turn came to step up to her window. Her bright-blue dyed hair had been fashioned into perky pigtails that stuck out from both sides of her head, like a colorblind Pippi Longstocking, and she was thematically dressed in a red flannel shirt and worn overalls. All she needed was a strand of straw lodged in the corner of her mouth and a tobacco wad stuffed into her lower lip.
I chuckled at the names Denby and Nash had chosen for the mazes. There’s nothing like a hint at the impossible to incite participation.
“Or entrance to all three for the very, very low price of…nothing!” Willow beamed at me. “As guests of the owners. I was given express instructions regarding you and a plus one.” She pitched her eyebrows toward Vaughn with a sly grin. “No charge. However, I have to warn you that you might have to pay extra if you require assistance in exiting any of the mazes.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Vaughn growled.
I could already feel his testosterone rising to the challenge as he accepted our complimentary tickets. Yeah, I’d dragged him along. Vaughn is a major crimes detective with the Fidelity Police Department, and I’d figured his problem-solving skills might come in handy for this little outing. It sure didn’t hurt that his analytical mind just happened to operate behind a pair of the yummiest warm brown eyes.
He’d also promised to feed me afterward at a swanky bistro newly opened in Fidelity’s quaintly gentrifying downtown and which I’d been dying to try. Considering how many times he’d availed himself of my French press coffee and baked goods while seated at the peninsula counter in my kitchen, this was a pleasant turning of the tables. And our third official date.
“Swell,” Willow answered. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she called after us.
Vaughn captured my hand and raised it to his lips.
“Especially that,” Willow hollered. “This is a family affair.”
I didn’t bother to turn around, just waved my free hand over my shoulder. She’d get the message. I wouldn’t mind a little necking among the tasseled stalks, but that sure didn’t mean she needed to see it.
The truth was, both Vaughn and I would behave circumspectly. Kind of hard not to when we lived in a small town and knew just about everybody—at least Vaughn did because of his job. As a recent transplant, I was catching up quickly, and not minding one bit. Okay, maybe a little when I received unsolicited advice from people I’d only just met, but that particular feature of the tight-knit community was more than offset by the myriad benefits.
An hour and a half later, we’d successfully graduated to the Rocket Science maze, and were somewhere between the fuel boosters and the astronaut capsule, trailing behind a young family with toddlers riding in backpack carriers on both of the parents and a Labradoodle on a long leash who was determined to mark every single turn in the maze although his bladder had gone dry ten minutes earlier, when urgent voices sounded from the path that ran parallel to ours.
The people were probably only a few feet from us, but we couldn’t see them for all the greenery. “I’ve just been instructed to get everybody out,” a young man said. His voice was cracking under the strain. “Please, could you follow me?”
“We paid good money for this,” an older male answered. “You can’t be closing early. What a load of hogwash.”
“Now honey,” said a more moderate female voice. “The children…”
“Forget the children,” the grumpy guy said. “We lost them an hour ago. Do you know how often we get alone time? This is a rip-off.”
“It’s nothing like that, sir,” returned the younger male voice. He was truly squeaking now. “It’s just that we have an emergency situation, and we’re trying to get everyone to safety as quickly as possible. Are you sure you don’t know where your children are?”
In front of us, the young couple had halted and were glancing worriedly at each other. Then they turned to us, their eyes wide but calm, questions written all over their faces. The Labradoodle continued to wind circles around their legs, nose glued to the straw-strewn track.
There was more bickering from beyond the vegetation. I could almost feel the serve-and-protect instinct take over in Vaughn’s veins, a sort of vibrating hum and tensing of his muscles. He slid his hands around my waist and gently moved me out of the way. Then he parted the stalks and waded toward the voices.
I followed closely on his heels, glad he was
blocking me from the majority of the sharp-edged leaves and tickly tassels. The young couple thrashed into the foliage behind me, their dog snorting with the pleasure of it.
“Where are we going, Mama?” piped one of the toddlers.
“Bushwhacking. Isn’t it fun?” she responded perkily.
Good for her. Because I wasn’t feeling such equanimity. If the situation bothered Vaughn, then it bothered me too.
The belligerent father in the next aisle over quickly lost his bark when a scowling Vaughn emerged from the cornstalks. He didn’t seem as eager to take on a six-foot-two man with a no-nonsense bearing as he had a pimply teenager.
“What’s wrong?” Vaughn asked the young red-haired and red flannel clad employee. It was an unfortunate pairing. He was also wearing a plastic badge that said Need directions? I’m Tim. Ask me!
“I’m not sure.” Tim flapped his hands in a futile gesture. “It just came over the walkie-talkie to get everyone out of all the mazes and rendezvous in the parking lot. I’m sure there’ll be refunds,” he added meekly.
“Fair enough.” Vaughn nodded to the previously irritated man, giving him the opportunity to save face by being the first to line up behind Tim for an expeditious exit.
Vaughn tugged on my arm and leaned in to murmur in my ear, making us lag behind the scurrying group. “What kind of emergency?”
I shook my head, baffled. “I’ve been to the farm only a few times, and I always met with the Frasers up at the house. They converted part of the wraparound porch into their office. I have no idea what would prompt an evacuation.” I glanced up at the crystalline blue sky visible between tall spears of green. “It’s not like we’re going to have a thunderstorm.”
Vaughn grunted softly and firmed his grip on my hand, speeding up our pace. He’s a premier hand-holder, having mastered the fine art of finger positioning, pressure, warmth, and duration. So I was enjoying that aspect, but was nevertheless having to fairly trot to keep up with him. I’m not that much shorter than he is, and usually our strides match comfortably.
But we kept the man with the space-age toddler-carrying mechanism on his back in sight and emerged into a clearing in the maze at the tail end of our rescue party in a matter of minutes. People were assembling from every direction, herded by harried employees in red flannel. Parents were straining to keep track of their children in the palpable undercurrent of anxiety.
But I was happy to see the belligerent man we’d encountered had been reunited with his progeny. He had a girl in a flowered dress who was probably too big to be carried in a normal situation balanced on his hip while he steered a boy of about ten with his hand on the kid’s bony shoulder. A disgruntled girl of about twelve going on forty-five with earbuds jammed into her ears, the cord leading to the smart phone sheathed in her rear pocket, slunk after her mother in their wake.
The crowd was funneling toward the narrow entrance to the maze. Generally, the adults were patient and composed, serious while shushing the children’s whiny complaints. I was pretty sure the employees weren’t going to have to deal with a stampede.
But there were fissures in the shuffling facade. A little girl launched into a meltdown, with a high-pitched screeching that somehow reverberated in my occipital bone and made me wince. Her father plucked her up out of the straw and slung her under his arm while she flailed away, keeping their family’s place in the long, merging line.
Muscles were bunched along the firm edge of Vaughn’s jaw. He remained alert but almost eerily poised, his tension manifest but not taut, eyes darting over the crowd and systematically scanning the periphery, displaying a level of training and experience I couldn’t really fathom but which was incredibly reassuring nonetheless.
I nudged his shoulder with my own. “Sorry,” I whispered. “Not very romantic, is it?”
The corners of his mouth curled up in that slightly amused grin he has, the one that makes me a little loopy. “Are you going to make it up to me later?” he asked in a low rumble, his eyes still watchful.
I had my mouth open for a snappy retort—what, exactly, I wasn’t sure yet—when the first sirens sounded in the distance.
Except they weren’t that distant. Not really. Already I could also hear the big tires of heavy vehicles crunching on the gravel in the parking lot. Fire engines, most likely. And perhaps Fidelity’s beast of a water tender, because the farm was well outside the range of any curbside hydrants.
“Come on.” Vaughn grabbed my hand again, and we dove into the cornstalks. Because, while not the safest option for the multitudes with their little ones, cross-country was our fastest way out.
CHAPTER 2
I was glad I’d worn jeans, sturdy boots, and a snug zippered, long-sleeved, fleece-lined corduroy jacket because the cornstalks tore at me, snagging my hair and stinging my face with what felt like a million paper cuts. We crossed several abandoned paths and then found the final perimeter barrier of vegetation that was a good ten feet thick. I was a disheveled mess by the time we emerged at the far north edge of the parking lot.
Already Vaughn was nodding to people as he pulled me along—to firefighters mostly and a few members of the general public who seemed to be moving quickly, like us, on a mission. I was pleased to see that the firefighters weren’t unrolling hoses. Which meant the emergency call hadn’t been about an active fire.
He veered when he spotted a particular firefighter with the word Captain outlined in reflective tape on the back of his heavy dirty-yellow jacket and hailed him, “Boone! What’s up?”
The middle-aged man had a jowly face that was mostly hidden under his helmet and he was already shaking his head by the time we drew up beside him—a process that seemed to require some revving in order to really get going. But he was an old hand at spitting out just the pertinent facts. “A tractor pulling a plow attachment turned over something that looks suspiciously bomb-like. Old. Rusty. Could just as well be a dud, but we’re here to manage the evacuation until the state explosive experts arrive.”
“Which field?” I asked, my breath tight.
“That I don’t know, missy,” he replied before turning away to give instructions to the medic team that had just arrived. They were probably on-scene in case someone suffered a heart attack or twisted an ankle in their hurried departure. People from the mazes were already streaming into the parking lot.
This time, I grabbed Vaughn’s hand. “Come on.” I started to tow him toward the farmhouse.
But he balked like a stubborn ox, with his feet dug into the gravel—so much so that my own momentum slung me back around to face him, our joined arms functioning like a big rubber band.
“You should go home. I’ll catch up with you later.” Vaughn pulled me closer and pressed the keys to his truck into my palm.
I’d known he wouldn’t leave the premises. He has a major dose of that thing—is it a character trait?—that makes some people run toward scary situations instead of away from them.
But it irritated me to no end that he thought I should leave. Talk about a double standard. I gave his shoulder a perfunctory pat. “That’s sweet, but no. I’m their publicist.”
My answer was more than sufficient for me, but it clearly didn’t meet Vaughn’s standards. He refused to release me. “It’s not worth risking your life over,” he growled.
I narrowed my eyes and spoke slowly and low so none of the people flowing around us could hear. “This farm is a fledgling business. Right now, all the Frasers really have, besides a lot of debt, is their reputation. This scenario could go either way—positive or negative, and it’s my job to make sure it goes the right way. You can join me, or you can find something else to do. But I’m guessing you’d like to be closer to the action. Which is that way.” I hitched my thumb over my shoulder.
I may have actually stunned him with my blatant flaunting of his suggestion-cloaked command. Those thick, dark brows drew together over the nose that has a little bump in it, as though it wasn’t perfectly set after being broke
n, and the amber flecks in his eyes turned more flint-like and much less toffee-like. Hmmm. But I held my ground.
“We’re going to talk about this later,” Vaughn finally whispered, but he tipped his head in agreement.
There was no time to gloat. It really wasn’t a gloating matter, anyway, especially if that bomb-like item wasn’t a dud. I took off at a fast trot, Vaughn easily keeping pace with me.
The lovely, if shabby (let’s just say it has good bones, and would probably need to be stripped all the way down to them in order to make a truly habitable home for anyone other than a love-struck, freshly entrepreneurial couple like the Frasers), farmhouse was situated on a knoll that gave the occupants a marvelous view of the surrounding fields. During my first visit to the farm, Denby had led me on a virtual panoramic tour by walking around the house and pointing to their various experiments in the distance—a greenhouse operation, permaculture sectors, strips of the most fertile soil designated for annual vegetables to be planted the following spring, and the plots that needed soil repair which were being planted with nitrogen-fixing cover crops. It had been a fascinating hour, and highly educational.
This was also why the Frasers had decided to name their business Heritage Farms, plural. Because they really had about eight different types of farming scheduled in their master plan, with options for several more if the early efforts flourished. It also meant the reported bomb could be in any number of locations, and the farmhouse would provide the perfect viewpoint from which to figure out where to focus my attention.
oOo
It was in the farthest reaches of one of the plots needing soil amendments. A John Deere tractor stopped in the middle of a long furrow, snugged up against the foothills of the coastal mountain range, was the dead giveaway. There aren’t a lot of good reasons to strand a tractor at the far edge of a field in the middle of a day unless you don’t want to aggravate whatever it just dug up.
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