Stipulations and Complications

by Becki Willis

  There. Up in the tree, almost directly above her. A red light blinked on the game-cam as it captured the rabbit’s escape.

  Madison glanced around, looking for signs of a deer-stand. Why else would Hank Adams have a game camera set up in the woods? She followed the projected scope of the camera, realizing it aligned directly with the path of least resistance to the fence line.

  So it’s not a game-cam, it’s a spy-cam. He’s trying to catch Allen Wynn if he comes onto the property. Geez. Maybe the old man really is paranoid, after all.

  Madison recalculated her path, choosing to push through a denser stand of trees to the right, far from the reach of the camera. She scanned the tree for additional cameras, but the one device seemed to be the extent of the old man’s paranoia.

  Or not. With the next snap, this one distinctly louder, Madison cried out in pain as she wrenched to the ground. Confusion raced through her pain-riddled mind. Had she turned her ankle? It throbbed like the devil. She did not remember a misstep, yet she heard the snap. Was the bone broken? Her palms hurt where she caught herself, and she was fairly certain a stick punctured her knee. But none of that compared to the pain and pressure around her left ankle.

  Madison managed to turn herself around and sit up, so that she could take stock of her situation. She was vaguely aware of dropping the distance meter and cell phone when she fell, but she would worry about that later, after she accessed the damage to her ankle.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she cried in disbelief.

  A shiny steel trap clamped securely around her booted foot. A bear trap? More likely, a panther trap. She tugged on her foot, but there was no give in the smooth steel jaws. She pulled harder. The only thing she succeeded in moving was the trap itself, pulling it from the hole in which it hid. Her eyes searched for the chain, finally spotting the first thick links as they disappeared into a small trench in the ground, covered well by fallen leaves. After that, the chain seemed to disappear. She overlooked it twice, before she finally realized the thick vine wrapped around the perimeter of a sturdy oak five feet away was actually the chain, cloaked in disguise.

  Were panthers smart enough to decipher the threat of a chain? A shiver of apprehension worked its way down her spine. Instinctively she knew. This trap was meant for a person, not an animal.

  She knew it was fruitless, but she reached for the chain with both hands and tugged with all her might. Her reward was a slight rattle, nothing more. Certainly not freedom.

  “Don’t panic.” Madison kept her voice calm and steady as she instructed her brain to stay focused. “There’s got to be a way to open the trap and get your foot out.” She looked around, spotted a sturdy-looking stick, and tried to use it as leverage to pry the trap open.

  It snapped as easily as a pretzel.

  “Okay, still no reason to panic.” She tugged on her foot again, realizing that the trap had snagged her foot on an angle, catching as much of her heel as it had the leather uppers of her boot. If she kept trashing her foot around, she might make the situation worse. If her heel slipped, the steel would tighten even more around her ankle. Worse, a sudden shift might cause the mighty jaws to snap again, this time breaking the bone.

  “How do you do it, Madison Cessna Reynolds? How do you get yourself into these predicaments?” she chided herself. For some reason, her mother-in-law sprang to mind. Wouldn’t Annette find this latest situation distasteful: the wife of her beloved late son, wallowing around on the forest floor, bound like a wild animal to a tree? Madison had no idea why she thought of the woman now, not when there were more pressing issues at hand. Namely, how she was going to free her wild animal self.

  She spied her cell phone, half-buried in the leaves several feet away. She could probably reach it if she tried hard enough, but she hated the thought of calling for help. And whom, exactly, would she call? She may or may not be trespassing, depending on whose legal side you were on, Wynn or Adams. The possibility — or probability — of breaking the law ruled out calling Brash.

  Dear Genny would gladly come to her rescue, but the baker knew no more about throwing traps than Madison did. That excluded her best friend. Cutter would come, but that would more than likely involve sirens and firetrucks, which would, in turn, involve the law. So calling Cutter was out. Granny Bert would come, of course, but she would probably be too busy laughing to offer any real help. Derron was her most likely source of help, but he was out of town today.

  As she ruled out her options one-by-one, her ankle continued to throb. It’s probably swelling, too, she thought. She leaned forward to unlace her hiking boot, loosening the tongue. She tested her ankle, wiggling it a bit to see how badly it was swollen.

  When her foot moved easily within the confines of the leather, an idea took shape. Still seated in the dirt, she searched the ground around her, until she found a suitable stone and a chunk of hard, dried wood. She squeezed them into the trap, alongside her wedged boot. It took additional twigs and more rocks, but after five minutes of intense effort, Madison had the space around her boot packed with trash. Satisfied that the trap was wedged wide open and could not tighten around her, she gingerly began to work her foot free. Lips pressed into a grimace, she made the slow and painful withdrawal. A final tug, and her foot slid free, just as the packing gave way and the trap snapped again.

  Exhausted, as much mentally as physically, Madison lay flat-out on the twig-littered ground, allowing her muscles to relax. She might have lain there longer, but the sounds of movement in the underbrush brought to mind the hogs and rumored panthers of the area. Even when she spotted the harmless armadillo, rooting noisily among the leaves left from autumn, she knew it was time to go. Worse than the wild animals, what if Hank Adams found her here, on the side of the fence he claimed as his property?

  She managed to stand, even though it hurt to put weight on her left foot. With a suspicious eye, she scanned the area in front of her for more hidden traps. Earlier, she had been too concerned with cameras to think about booby-traps, but now it seemed she had to search from top to bottom, just to navigate the remaining four feet to the fence. She found a long limb and poked it along the path before her, sweeping the ground for more pitfalls. Satisfied, she hobbled from one tree to the next, using the limb as a sort of crutch.

  At the fence, she balanced on her right foot, trying to determine the best way to go through. Should she lead on her good foot, or her bad? As she contemplated the issue, she made certain the items in her pocket were stuffed in good and tight, and in no danger of falling out when she crawled through the barbed wire.

  Instead of tamping the items down more securely, she managed to jerk the distance finder out when she pulled her hand free. It fell onto the top strand of the fence and bounced to the second.

  Great. That thing probably costs several hundred dollars, and –

  Sparks flew as the instrument hit the barbed wire. Madison heard a pop, then a sizzle. A bit dazed, she realized there was an electrical hot wire running along with the second strand of wire.

  Talk about paranoid! Electrical fences, spy-cams, traps… Hank Adams was either psychotic, or he definitely had something to hide on his side of the fence. But what? She hadn’t seen a thing worth defending.

  Judging from the smoke wafting up from the wires, the meter had shorted out the electrical fence, leaving Madison free to cross the boundary. She got down on her belly and crawled beneath the wires. It was hardly dignified, but she was fairly certain she lost all pretense of dignity the moment she stepped into the thicket. Her hair was littered with trash, her clothes were torn and dirty, she was missing a boot, and she had probably just broken the law.

  She could see the truck parked a good fifty yards away. At least the terrain on this side of the fence was fairly flat. It was a slow go, but with help of the pilfered limb and the fine art of hopping, Madison managed to make her way to the vehicle.

  The slow journey gave her plenty of time to think. Why did Hank Adams want the thicke
t and the useless gully beyond? From what she could decipher, all the trees and half the ravine belonged to Allen Wynn. She understood not wanting to build a fence down in the gully, although she was certain it was possible and done countless of times by others. Why not skirt the perimeter and build the fence at least closer to the property line?

  It had to be something about the trees, or something within the trees. She hadn’t gone through the entire thicket, after all. She entered at the densest point, the part closest to the gully and the point least protected. She had exited several yards down, in Rambo territory apparently, leaving the middle section of the trees undisturbed.

  “Wonder what pitfalls awaited me there?” she muttered aloud. “A snare? I might have been snatched up and left hanging from a tree. That might have been fun.”

  She wondered how she avoided electrocution upon entry into the property. Did the electric fence not reach that far? And why no traps or cameras?

  Because, you fool, no one else is feeble-minded enough to take the animal trails. A normal person would take the path of least resistance. Proving once again that you, Madison Reynolds, are not normal.

  As she hobbled alongside the fence, careful not to touch it, she discovered why she had been spared an electrical shock going in. The wire was broken at a coupling, rendering that section of the hot fence impotent.

  At least one thing had been going in her favor today. She tried to appreciate the small blessing as she hobbled the last few feet of the way. Her ankle throbbed, her insides were all shook up, and she was exhausted.

  But she was finally, blessedly, back to the truck.

  ***

  “What happened to you?”

  Instead of warm concern, Granny Bert eyed her with suspicion when Madison bumped her way up to the front door. Having left the handy limb behind, Madison had nothing to prop herself upon as she juggled her purse, the borrowed surveying equipment, a box that had been delivered to the front porch, and the front door lock. Hearing the commotion, Granny Bert had come to open the door.

  Without preamble, Madison shoved most of her load into her grandmother’s arms.

  “I turned my ankle.” This much was true. She simply left out the part about turning it while stepping into a steel trap.

  Granny Bert peered down at her stockinged foot. A bright red toenail poked through the ravaged tip. “Where’s your boot?”

  “My foot was swelling,” Madison answered vaguely. When she got within falling distance, she threw herself onto the sofa and sank thankfully into its cushions. “Good grief, what a day!”

  “Is this a new hairstyle I don’t know about? Or were you undercover as a tree?” She plucked a twig from Madison’s disheveled hair, dislodging a strand of moss. It floated down onto Madison’s shoulder, followed by a piece of a leaf.

  “Something like that.”

  “Let’s see the foot.” With no pretense of trying to be gentle, Granny Bert jerked Madison’s pants leg up and inspected her ankle by twisting it painfully in every direction. “Doesn’t seem too bad. But let’s get the sock off and put some ice on it, just in case.”

  Madison shielded her eyes with her arm, trying to rest while her grandmother fetched the ice. She jumped when the cold cubes touched her skin.

  “How did you say you did this?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Confidential case, or not fit for public consumption?” Granny Bert tossed a glance toward the overhead cameras. It was clear from the eager glint in her eyes that she hoped for the latter.

  Madison made a growling sound low in her throat. Amazingly, she had somehow forgotten about the cameras that were ever rolling, intruding into her life even at moments like this. She raised her arm above her head and presented her palm. Speaking to the room at large and its multiple audio devices, her voice was weary as she said, “This segment is strictly forbidden from the cameras and mics. Under no circumstances do you have my permission to air any of this.”

  The camera was allowed in the common rooms of the house, its purpose to capture conversations pertaining to the remodel. There was a loose agreement that no other scenes would be kept, but already a snippet or two had made its way into the final cut. So far, the random shots had been harmless enough, no more than brief, general scenes that showed a normal family doing normal, everyday things. But Madison knew it was only a matter of time before that changed.

  Also by loose agreement, any member of the family could ‘opt out’ by voicing a disclaimer as Madison had just done. She made a mental note to get the agreement in writing. Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile. Makes for good television, they say.

  Not certain she fully trusted the production team, even for the conditions listed on paper, Madison dropped her voice to a near-whisper. “Granny, what can you tell me about Hank Adams? You’ve known him for a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Only if you call eighty years a long time. Well, maybe seventy-nine. I think he’s a few months younger than me.” She frowned as she readjusted the ice pack on Madison’s ankle. “Why are you asking about him? Thinking of firing your carpenter and hiring a local team after all?” She flashed a wrinkled smile, reminding her granddaughter of her previous shenanigans. The shrewd older woman had used the threat of hiring Hank Adams and his rag-tag team of helpers to remodel the Big House, claiming it would be far cheaper than allowing Nick Vilardi to do the job. By the time she had finished, the celebrity carpenter was ready to agree to any terms to secure the job. After just a few weeks, he returned with an offer none of them had seen coming: to remodel the entire house at no out-of-pocket expense.

  Just out-of-mind expenses, Madison reminded herself. Stipulations.

  Deliberately speaking loud enough that the mics could hear her, she had a wry comeback. “Replacing them might make life easier.”

  “What does this have to do with your ankle? Hank is getting hard of seeing. He didn’t cause you to have another wreck, did he? Because I don’t know how much more your insurance company is willing to overlook, even if your cousin does own the agency.”

  “No, I didn’t have another wreck,” Madison snapped testily. “I told you, I turned my ankle.”

  “He bumped into you at the grocery store? Knocked you off the sidewalk trying to get a Gennydoodle cookie, hot out of the oven? I swear, he’s gained ten pounds since Genny opened up.”

  “Nothing like that. I was just asking you how well you know the man.”

  Granny Bert shrugged her bony shoulders. “About as well as you know anybody, I suppose, without living with them or being family. We grew up together. Our mamas both worked at the Big House, so our paths crossed even before we started school. There was only a dozen or so students in our grade most years, sometimes as many as twenty, but not enough that you didn’t get sick and tired of seeing the same old faces, day in and day out. Hank dropped out around the tenth grade, but he ended up marrying one of my best friends, so it seemed there was no escaping him. Not that I ever wanted to, mind you. Hank and Virgie have been good friends through the years.”

  “Jimmy Adams is his nephew, right?”

  “That’s right, Neville’s son. Jimmy is partners with your uncle at The Sisters Sale Barn and Ag teacher at the school. One of Hank and Virgie’s daughters teaches fourth grade. Their son owns the Gold and Silver Exchange. The Adams family has been in the area for years.”

  “So what’s this about a boundary dispute with Allen Wynn?”

  Normally full of all the latest gossip, for a moment her grandmother seemed to falter. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. Both men claim ownership to a small section of land. I doubt it’s enough to cause too big a ruckus.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Madison murmured. “From what I can tell, the land belongs to Allen, but Hank is being unreasonable.”

  “The man can be as stubborn as a mule, that’s for sure and certain. But sooner or later, he’ll come around.”

  “I don’t know about that. He seems determined to kee
p Allen off the property in question. But for the life of me, I can’t see why. It’s nothing but trees and a huge gully that backs up to Pine Bluff.”

  “Sounds like you’ve seen the property,” Granny Bert observed wisely.

  “I worked that week for Boundaries Surveying, you recall. We were surveying that very piece of land when… well, you know.” She did not want to re-live the events that led to her overnight hospital stay, nor did she want to mention them with the cameras rolling, disclaimer or not.

  “Didn’t think you made it quite that far into the place.”

  Granny Bert always could see straight through her. Madison’s shrug was noncommittal. “I take it Hank Adams is hard to get along with.”

  “Not at all. Why would you think such a thing?”

  “Just… an observation.”

  “Wouldn’t have anything to do with the twigs in your hair and the swelling in your foot, would it?”

  “That depends. Would you say he’s a vindictive man?” A bit of worry seeped into Madison’s voice.

  “What have you done, child?”

  Her eyes darted to the camera. “Nothing.”

  Lifting Madison’s injured foot unceremoniously, Granny Bert held it aloft as she plopped down on the couch. Madison scrambled to move the other leg out of the way as Granny Bert settled in beside her. Only then did she drop Madison’s leg to rest upon her lap. “Might as well tell me about it,” she said, but she kept her voice conspiratorially low.

  “I will. But first, tell me more about Hank.”

  Granny Bert considered her words before speaking, something she often neglected to do. “Hank grew up poor but honest. The Adams family had lived in River County for years, long before The Sisters existed. When the towns were formed and boundary lines drawn, the Adams’ land fell on the outskirts of Naomi. His family, though, worked for Miss Juliet at the Big House. His grandfather, Truman Ford, was the butler, and one of Miss Juliet’s most trusted employees. There was always talk that Miss Juliet would leave her estate to Truman and Lily Ford, or at least to their offspring. They died long before her, of course, but Ruth Adams was still living, and so were her boys, Hank and Neville. Fact is, Hank expected to inherit the house. He did odd jobs for Miss Juliet all the time, tinkering around here and there, fixing what was broken, but he never allowed her to pay him. Some say he was doing it because he thought it would all be his one day. Others said he was repaying an old debt his family owed. I never asked. But I do know that when Miss Juliet passed on and her will was read, leaving most everything to me, Hank took it mighty hard. Said a few things he later apologized for. Took years, mind you, but after a while he forgave me for inheriting what he thought should have gone to him.”