Plain Roots

by Becki Willis

  It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.

  Still, she kept hidden there behind the tomato plants. She wouldn’t go forward and share her low opinion of the man to his face. Not just now. Not until this funny feeling worked its way out of her stomach and she had shaken the silly notion of fear from her head. The man was pompous, conceited, and full of his own self-worth, but he wasn’t dangerous, not unless you stood within range of all that hot air as it escaped. Despicable, but not dangerous.

  Was he?

  It was that little wiggle of worry that kept her firmly in place. She crouched lower, watching as he surveyed his surroundings. Even from there, Taryn could see the smirk of distaste upon his face. His lip curled as he looked at the three-bay garage, empty now except for the utility wagon. Her sensible sedan sat off to the side, unused and already collecting grass beneath its frame. Deborah, ever the saleswoman (and even if it were only make-believe), had propped a hand-made For Sale sign in its back window. He dismissed the drab scene, more interested in the flashy Corvette. She thought she saw a cunning smile replace the smirk.

  His attention zeroed in on the apartment over the garage. As he started up the steps, Taryn knew this was her chance to escape, but where would she go? He had the driveway blocked. If she stayed there, he could easily see her from the deck.

  Taryn kept low, inching her way into the thick rows of tomatoes and corn. She silently apologized to her aunt for any plants she might crush, but she rooted her way amid them the best she could.

  She could see Thomas Baxter as he stepped onto the landing, and as he peered into the windows of the long, multi-purpose room. She shrank back as he stepped to the rail and overlooked the farm below. She was certain he could hear the thud of her heart from there, or the blood surging through her body at record speed. Huge chunks of ice bumped their way through her veins, clanging and clamoring, and making her cold in the warm morning sun.

  Taryn saw him move toward the door at the end of the deck. She had locked the door behind her, but there was no guarantee he wouldn’t force his way inside.

  And the flowered bag was inside…

  Chapter 36

  Taryn scolded herself. She was being ridiculous.

  Thomas Baxter was a well-known businessman and was on the fast track to running for the highest office in the state. He wasn’t the first person to have his fingers in a variety of business ventures, even those that were questionable. She had absolutely no reason to think the man would break into her room and snoop around.

  And even if he did, it was doubtful he would find the bag.

  Why, then, was she still hiding? A plump ear of corn tickled her ear, its silky husk practically begging her to pluck it from the stalk.

  Taryn knew she had limited choices. She could stay cowered there in the garden until he left or come out in the open. Neither option appealed to her.

  The third choice was to make her way forward from the garden, around the rambling farmhouse, and out to the road. His attention focused on the window beside her door, but sooner or later, he was certain to see her open run for the road. Plus, it was beginning to mist again. A glance at the spongy overhead clouds told her they could spill their contents at any moment.

  Or, she could go backwards. Into the barns.

  Taryn couldn’t say exactly why, but at the moment, that seemed like her surest bet.

  With Baxter still at the window, Taryn slipped from the leafy cover of the gardens and hurried toward the chicken coop. The chickens protested her unwelcome presence, but their clucks weren’t boisterous enough to draw his attention. She paused behind the safety of the hen house and looked back at the deck.

  Her heart skipped a beat when she saw no sign of Baxter. That meant either he let himself into her room, or he headed back down the stairs.

  At any rate, it meant she had to move. The space between the chicken yard and the barn was wide open. An implement or two sat to the side of the graveled dirt drive, but the highly visible road was the straightest path, leading directly into the barn. She could only hope Baxter had his back turned, and she could run fast enough to escape his attention.

  With a deep breath of courage and a quickly muttered prayer, Taryn shot out across the yard and ran straight for the drive. She stopped several feet into the barn, hoping she was far enough into its depths not to be seen. It took a few moments to replenish her lungs with air, as she looked around to find the best place for cover.

  She was inside the dairy barn, where at least two dozen cows were contently lazing in their stalls. Some were lying down, chewing their cuds and wiling away the hours until the next milking. Others stood, nibbling on the hay and grain scattered before them. Taryn had no time to marvel at their massive udders, or to wonder how securely they were tethered to the metal railings. She ignored the large, docile eyes that turned to her in mild curiosity.

  A few of the bovines called to her in greeting, their low, mellow sounds more of a murmur than a bawl. Taryn tuned out the ovation, her ears keyed to noises from outside. Was Baxter bumping around in her room? Had his long car purred to life yet? Was that the swish of fabric she heard, as he made his way out to the barn?

  She had to know. She knew better than to stay here in the central corridor, which meant she had to find a window. Some way to track his whereabouts and know whether the man left or came looking for her. Spotting an empty horse stall along the front outer wall, Taryn hurried its way. She shoved on the gate, but it wouldn’t budge.

  With hardly a thought to her khaki capris and sandals, she crawled over the panel. She refused to think of what that spongy feeling was beneath her shoes, or what might be oozing over the soles and onto her toes. She concentrated on the closed shutter, and the thin slant of light beneath it. If she bent her knees and held her head exactly right, she could see the vegetable garden from here. Taryn squeezed between a stack of old buckets and an assortment of shovels, so she could get a better view.

  She could only see the edge of its bumper, but the car still sat in the driveway, meaning Baxter had not given up yet. And judging from the way the chickens were beginning to scuttle and squawk… Yep. There he was. He glanced over his shoulder every now and then, and gave the chicken coop a thorough eye exam, but he continued on his path toward the barn.

  In her hasty retreat, Taryn knocked over the buckets. They clattered noisily off one another, but layers of old muck and hay muffled their landing. She didn’t bother to see if Baxter had heard the racket from outside. She was already on the move, crawling back over the gate.

  For the most part, the cement floors of the barn were swept clean. The corridors were lined with assorted farm-related paraphernalia, but there was ample room to navigate, even at a hurried pace.

  She heard him before she saw him. Just before she turned onto the nearest cross aisle, she heard his voice. She glanced back to see his shadow fall across the opening.

  “Taryn? Taryn, I just want to talk. I have an offer to discuss with you.”

  She knew better than to be fooled. No offer of a job would send the almighty Thomas Baxter into a lowly barn. If he came looking for her, he had more on his mind than business. Legitimate business, at any rate.

  Taryn paused only long enough to make a choice.

  She had been inside the barn once before, and knew it was a like a maze. Rows of stalls and pens, with alleys and crosswalks that led to more stalls and pens. Nooks and crannies stuffed into every available inch.

  The skeleton of the old barn was a hodgepodge of wood and masonry. Cement walls integrated with patches of stone and mortar, and boards so ancient they were practically petrified. A network of timber beams, iron pipe, and sturdy wooden planks braced the structure and held it all together. If there were time, she would have stared in awe at the history-laced complex, marveling at the size and age of the beams, and wondered how a mere mortal could have manhandled them, perhaps as much as a hundred years ago.

  But there was no time. She had to head deeper into the bo
wels of the great barn, and she had to do it without alerting him to her whereabouts.

  “It’s no use, Taryn.” From the faint echo of his words, she knew he had fully moved into the barn now. “You know how determined I can be. I won’t give up so easily. Come on out, and we can have a nice conversation.”

  Taryn kept going, hoping to get further away from the man. The stalls on her right were empty, but cows randomly filled those on her left, their back ends facing her. She left a wide berth between her and their hind legs, just in case one decided to kick.

  “I hear you’re looking for your mother,” Baxter said. As usual, his voice held a condescending note. She wondered if he practiced the method. No doubt, he used it to make underlings feel foolish, as if having an original thought of their own was somehow laughable. Mildly entertaining, but useless. She had heard the patronizing manner often enough at the office, but there was no place for it here, at her family’s homestead. Or for the man’s inflated opinion of himself.

  “I knew her, you know.”

  The words stopped her in her tracks, just as he had known they would.

  Her feet ground to a stop, but her mind churned. Thomas Baxter knew she had come here on a quest to find her roots. Thomas Baxter knew her mother. Thomas Baxter was here on the farm, actively seeking her out.

  She thought of the unsettled feeling she had earlier, when she first saw him there on the deck. The turmoil in her gut. The suspicions whispered in her head. The absolute dread she had felt. The panic.

  The horror.

  It came over her in waves now, threatening to drown her. It washed against her in surges, each swell hitting her with staggering force.

  Thomas Baxter taking a keen and unusual interest in her, from the first moment she started at the law firm.

  More than once, the businessman commenting about her unusual eye color, asking if it was a family trait.

  His business holdings in France.

  His interest in horses, and in gambling. He owned world-renown race horses, stables, and now a casino.

  She suddenly remembered how she knew the name Wilford Downing. He was one of Baxter’s employees, a manager for an offshoot distributor, part of the Ines International umbrella.

  And Ines. The name had sounded so familiar before, even though Bryce pronounced it wrong. He said it in one syllable, like the word tines without the t. Thomas Baxter used the French pronunciation, rolling the name into two distinct syllables. Ee-nes.

  The facts rained down upon her.

  Wilford Downing was one of the men following her. Downing worked for Baxter.

  Baxter kept popping up in Lancaster County. Not just now, but all those years ago.

  Ahndray Lamont worked for Ines International, a Baxter holding.

  Ahndray Lamont was her father. Did that make Thomas Baxter…

  The Toad.

  It was the only way Taryn could think of him. Her mind would not allow her to make the other logical conclusion, that Baxter was her father’s father, and therefore her grandfather. She couldn’t deal with that just now. It was bad enough that he was the Toad.

  Thomas Baxter was the Toad.

  As the words sank in, Taryn felt her knees weaken and threaten to buckle.

  Her stunned revelation gave Thomas Baxter the advantage. When her feet forgot how to move, his not only remembered, but made quick work of it. She was still rooted to the spot when he unknowingly kicked something—most likely a dried cow chip—on the adjacent aisle. A few more seconds, and she would have been standing in sight when he turned the corner.

  She ducked into the first opening she saw.

  Taryn swallowed her fears and sidled up between the two large bovines. One turned her large, deep-brown eyes upon the unexpected guest, while the other swished her tail. When the black and white hide swayed toward her, Taryn bumped into the other cow. It was all she could do to bite back a scream as a long, nubby tongue with the texture of sandpaper slid across her arm.

  Taryn bit her tongue and endured the Holstein’s gentle abuse. It was better than the alternative.

  “I know you’re in here, Taryn. I know you’re hiding, but it won’t do any good. Come out, and let’s discuss this like adults.” Baxter’s voice waned momentarily, as he turned his head to look in the opposite direction. All too soon, it grew stronger. She knew he had turned her way and was making his way down the alley. Ever closer to her Holstein sandwich.

  “It was the eyes,” Baxter said, his voice almost conversational. “The moment I saw your eyes, I knew you had to be Rebecca’s child.”

  Taryn swallowed her gasp.

  “Eyes so violet are unique, everywhere but in this one corner of Lancaster County. Did you ever wonder about that, Taryn? How an impossible eye color could be so common? It’s a defect, you know. An abnormality. A mutation of the genes.” His chuckle lacked any measure of humor. “But what more could you expect, with all the inbreeding? These Amish bloodlines are so muddled, after generation upon generation of recreating in such limited social circles. Be glad your eyes are the only thing that came out deformed.”

  Taryn shrank deeper into the stall, bonding with the beast that seemed so taken with her. Her skin no longer crawled from the stroke of the cow’s rough tongue. It crawled now with the chill of Baxter’s words, and the way he made her most unique feature seem vile and disgraceful. Taryn pressed closer against the cow’s warm body, finding an odd sense of comfort in the contact. She absently rubbed her hand back and forth across the coarse hair.

  Baxter’s voice, getting closer still, turned bitter. “And then my son comes along—my own flesh and blood! —and offers his DNA into the gene pool. Tainted our dignified bloodline, traceable back to Scottish royalty, with the blood of these Plain people! He married your mother behind my back. Bred her and impregnated her with a child.” He all but spat the words, as if they left a foul taste in his mouth.

  Taryn gave her bovine friend a final pat and bid her a silent adieu. Swallowing hard, she ducked beneath the second cow’s head and slipped through a tiny gap in the iron railing.

  The freedom on the other side of the stall was short lived. A crude cement wall forced her to make a decision, and she made the wrong one. She wound up in a small equipment room, effectively trapped.

  Coming ever closer, Thomas Baxter continued his one-sided conversation.

  “I took care of your father. Sent him packing back to France, where he should have stayed in the first place. It was his mother’s doing that he even came to this country,” he grumbled. “Ines made me swear to bring him here when he was old enough, to find a place for him in the family business. But he didn’t have the stomach for the job that needed to be done. He’s too much of an animal lover.”

  Taryn heard the tirade, but she was busy trying to find her way out of a dead-end situation. A large steel tank sat in the middle of the room, with hoses and tubing attached to it. A few smaller steel jugs were scattered around it, all with identical, strange-looking apparatuses. The tubes on the smaller vats branched off into four cylindrical cups, each edged in rubber, with a smaller set of hoses dangling nearby. A five-gallon bucket claimed to hold powdered soap.

  None were suitable weapons of defense, but Taryn grabbed a jug and held it like a shield before her.

  “I got rid of your mother, too,” he said. The off-handed manner in which he said it made her blood boil.

  He stepped into the doorway, that familiar smirk upon his face.

  “Ah, at last.” Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes, along with something much more sinister. It was in the leer he gave her, seeing her trapped there, and at his mercy.

  “I remember a similar incident,” he recalled softly, his eyes bright with the glow of evil, “almost forty years ago. Another woman. Another pair of violet eyes. Another room with no way out.”

  “How did you do it?”

  The sound of her own voice surprised her, in itself so cold and matter-of-fact. It revealed nothing of the rage burning just beneat
h the surface, or of the pure hatred she felt for this man. Self-preservation still would not allow her to think of him as her grandfather.

  “How did you kill Rebecca?” she asked, just as calmly.

  He looked down at his hands, flexing his long fingers. Despite his advance in years, there was no denying he was still a strong and virile man. His fingers moved easily, unencumbered with arthritis or crippling joint disease. He spoke not a word, but Taryn knew he had killed her mother with those very hands, no doubt snuffing the air from her lungs.

  Her own fingers fidgeted with the attachments at the end of the hoses. She bided her time, until she had at least a few answers to her many questions.

  “Where?” she asked. This time, there was a croak to her voice. She refused to think of the connotation, connecting her in any way to this horrible toad.

  “Where did you kill her? And when?”

  “What makes you think I killed your mother?” he asked. His lips curled into a hideous smirk. In his arrogance, he leaned casually against the doorframe. It was his way of showing that he was in charge. He was relaxed and enjoying himself. And he had her pathway blocked.

  Taryn’s eyes flicked over him, taking in the tailor-made clothes and slick persona. Her eyes drew to the buttons on his casual but oh-so-chic blazer. She wasn’t stepping closer to confirm her suspicions, but she was certain the buttons matched the one upstairs in her room. That hadn’t been an inscribed TP. It was TB, for Thomas Baxter.

  “It makes sense,” Taryn said, her fingers still busy. “She was never heard from again, after she left the hospital. You just said you got rid of her. I doubt you sent her to France to be with my father, so it makes sense that you killed her. Before you do the same to me, I just want to know how you did it. When you did it.”

  “You ask a lot of questions. Just like your mother.”