Sara was opening the package. “Maybe it’s Castle Heights, but I didn’t know the McDowells owned anything over there.” She pulled the deed from the package and began to read it. At last she whispered, “Merlin’s Farm.”
“That’s it,” Mike said as he put the scallops in a hot skillet. “Merlin, Potter. I knew it was something to do with wizardry.” He bent to look at the flame and turn it down. When he straightened, Sara was standing beside him—and her face was red with anger.
“You bastard!” she said under her breath.
“What?”
“You lying, sneaking bastard.” Her voice was rising. “You are in on this. You’re working with them to destroy what I want in life. I was ready to believe you were innocent, but you’re the worst one. You—”
For the second time in Mike’s life, he allowed a woman to slap him. He made no effort to stop her or to protect himself, because he knew that every word she was saying was true. But how had she found out about his undercover work?
When he saw tears in her eyes, he fought the urge to pull her into his arms. He wanted to apologize to her and to all the women he’d hurt in his life. Right now there were four women in prison because of his testimony. They all deserved to be there, but he still didn’t like that he had put them there.
As the tears filled Sara’s eyes, she seemed unable to say anymore. She swept past Mike, and as she’d done the night before, she slammed her bedroom door.
For a moment, Mike stood there, his cheek burning, and tried to figure out what had happened. She’d found him out, but how? He turned off the burner on the stove, went to the table, picked up the portfolio, and looked in it. Sara had taken out only the top paper. He read it, but it was just the usual legalese stating the longitude and latitude of a piece of property commonly known as Merlin’s Farm, and deeding it to Michael Farlane Newland.
When Sara spoke, he nearly jumped because he hadn’t heard her come into the kitchen. “I want you to leave,” she said softly.
Turning, he looked at her. Her eyes were red from crying and she looked so lost and forlorn in her pretty white dress that he just wanted to protect her—which he was trying to do. For a moment the photos he’d seen of the women they were fairly sure had been murdered by Stefan Vandlo flashed before his eyes. If Mike moved out and gave up watching over her, would he soon see pretty, delicate little Sara Shaw in a shallow grave?
“I want you to leave now. I’m sorry your apartment was destroyed, but you have to find somewhere else to stay. If you can’t find a hotel, I’m sure my mother will take you in. Or maybe I will leave.” There was an old land line telephone on the wall, and when Sara reached for it, he saw that her hands were shaking.
If he weren’t on such an important mission, he would have done as she asked and left. He didn’t like being the cause of any woman’s tears. But he couldn’t leave.
When he went to her, he couldn’t help himself as he put his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t push him away, so when she started crying again, he pulled her against his chest. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Whatever I did, I didn’t mean to. Please tell me what’s wrong.”
She was crying hard, her whole slight body trembling against his, and her tears were wetting his shirt. He could feel the damp and the warmth of them on his skin.
Carefully, he led her into the living room, sat her down on the couch beside him, grabbed a handful of tissues, and began to blot her face.
She took the tissues from him and blew her nose, and he handed her fresh ones.
“Will you talk to me? Please?”
“Merlin’s Farm,” she managed to get out.
“Is that the problem?” he asked gently. “Did you want the place?”
She gave a hiccup and blew her nose again as she nodded. “And Greg wants it very much, even more than I do.”
It was as though an electrical current passed through Mike. Stefan Vandlo wanted an old farm that according to Tess was rotting to the ground? Mike took a couple of breaths to calm himself. He knew that he had to be cautious in what he said now so he wouldn’t set Sara off again.
“Rams wouldn’t sell the farm to Greg,” Sara said, sniffing.
“That’s because Ramsey promised it to Tess nearly two years ago.”
“Two years? But they weren’t even lovers then.”
“No,” Mike said slowly, cautiously, doing all he could not to further upset her. “But Tess took care of Ramsey’s life and his office, didn’t she?
“Yes, but …” Sara trailed off, seeming not to know what else to say.
From his end there was no secrecy involved in the farm, so Mike decided to be honest with her. “At the end of the third year she’d worked for him, Ramsey asked Tess what she thought would be an appropriate bonus, and she said she wanted Merlin’s Farm.”
“And he gave it to her? Just like that? He gave her a farm that’s been in his family for over two hundred years?”
“No. Tess didn’t ask that of him. She wanted him to draw up a contract that gave her a lifetime lease on it, but only after she’d managed to save twenty percent of its value as a down payment.”
Sara wiped at her teary eyes. “That sounds like Tess. And I guess she wanted the place for you.” There was bitterness in her voice.
Mike was dying to ask what the farm had to do with Vandlo, but he knew he had to hold back. “The truth is, she hopes it will entice me to retire here.”
“And what you want most in the world is a broken-down old farm?” Sara looked him up and down, at his pristine clothes. “You don’t look much like a farmer. Wouldn’t you rather have some sleek apartment in Williamsburg?”
When Sara kept looking at him in expectation, Mike knew he was going to have to tell the whole truth, which meant that he would have to reveal a great deal more about himself than he’d told anyone since he was a kid. As an adult, he’d worked hard at avoiding telling anything about his personal life, but then, secrecy was ingrained in him. But ever since he’d arrived in this town, it seemed that everything he’d tried to achieve was being knocked down. The first time someone had mentioned his grandmother to him, he’d wanted to leave.
“That’s all right,” Sara said as she started to get up. “You don’t have to tell me.”
He caught her arm and she sat back down.
As she waited for him to answer, he thought that being shot was easier than having to confess the truth. “Remember that I told you I picked Tess up when she graduated from high school?”
“Yes.”
“What I didn’t add was that Tess was underage then—but I wasn’t. Our grandmother said she’d raise a stink with the police if Tess didn’t agree to do what she wanted her to. If the old woman had reported me, I probably wouldn’t have been prosecuted, but since I was new to the force, she could have halted my career.”
“What did she want Tess to do?”
Mike leaned back against the sofa. “She wanted Tess to—somehow—obtain Merlin’s Farm.”
“But why?” Sara asked. “Did your grandmother want to be a farmer?”
Mike shook his head. “Far from it. She had our backyard covered in concrete because she didn’t like the dirt.”
“So, then, why …?”
It was difficult for Mike to keep calm. One time after he’d had too many beers, he’d made a joke that nothing in his undercover jobs frightened him because no one he’d ever met was as treacherous as the woman who’d raised him. The men he was drinking with had wanted to know more, but Mike hadn’t said a word—and he’d stopped drinking.
Sara put her hand on his arm. “Is this hard for you to talk about?”
“Naw,” he said with as much bravado as he could muster. “The old woman hated Edilean and everyone in it, but she used to say that her only good memory of it was the afternoons she spent at Merlin’s Farm with a boy named Lang.”
“Not Brewster Lang?” Sara asked, her eyes wide.
Mike grinned. “I heard he’s the crankiest man in
Edilean.”
“Try in all of Virginia. Forget him, what about the farm?”
“Grans used to rhapsodize about it. I think that over the years she made it into a sort of Valhalla, a heaven, where only good could happen. I think she meant to die there.”
“It was her ‘happy place.’”
“It sure wasn’t with us kids!” Mike said with feeling. “So, anyway, she threatened to report me for kidnapping an underage child if Tess didn’t swear that after she finished college, she’d go back to Edilean and do anything she could to own Merlin’s Farm. At the time, I tried to get Tess to say no, but …” He shrugged. “You know Tess.” He didn’t embellish his story by telling how Tess had kept in touch with the old woman for the rest of her life. Nor did he tell her that after their grandfather’s death, it had been financially difficult for him and Tess to keep their grandmother in a retirement home. She had demanded a place that was known for its luxurious accommodations and caring staff.
Sara stared at him in silence for a few moments. “Everyone wondered why Tess agreed to work here as Ramsey’s secretary. We knew she had an MBA, but she came here to this little town to take dictation.”
“She swore to our grandmother that she’d do what she could, and the old woman was still alive when Tess graduated, so she felt she had to keep her vow.” Mike smiled.
“What?”
“I was just remembering one of the fights Tess and I had while she was still in school. I didn’t want her to go to Edilean, but she wouldn’t listen to me. You know what she said?”
“Tell me,” Sara said eagerly.
“She said she’d get Merlin’s Farm no matter what she had to do. I said, ‘And how will you do that?’ Tess said, ‘I plan to get a job with the McDowell law firm, and if I have to, I’ll marry whoever owns that damned farm.’”
Sara looked at Mike in astonishment. “And that’s exactly what happened. Tess came to Edilean and took a job from my cousin just to get an old farm from him.”
“It started that way.” Mike was afraid he’d made her think Tess had falsely enticed Ramsey into marriage.
“I know,” Sara said, and her eyes softened. “Tess fell in love with Rams, then waited for years for him to realize he was in love with her.”
“Yeah, she did.” His voice showed his relief, and he thought that it was a good thing Grans was dead by that time or the old woman would have shown up with a machine gun. Her granddaughter marrying a McDowell! That’s the worst thing she could have imagined.
“So now, to Rams’s old-fashioned mind, you’re family, so the farm could be given to you.”
“With lots of limitations,” Mike added, with the thought that finally, at last, he could get back to what he wanted to talk about: Stefan Vandlo. All in all, he thought, criminals were much easier than “good” people. If he wanted information from a crook, Mike just paid him money. To get information from sweet little Sara he had to bare his soul. Oh yes, criminals were much easier. “Uh, Sara,” he said cautiously. “You mentioned that your fiancé wanted the farm.”
She gave him a look of apology. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you bring out the anger in me. You’d never believe me, but I rarely show anyone else when I’m angry. You can ask Greg and he’d say I don’t even have a temper.”
Mike had to resist the urge to kiss her hand in gratitude because he knew that Vandlo liked to hit women who thwarted him. But Mike sat still. “It’s your turn for confessions. Why does he want that old farm?”
“I’m not sure,” Sara said, but she shifted her eyes sideways, making Mike think she wasn’t telling the truth, or not all of it, anyway. “Greg talked about a lot of things, from remodeling it and opening it to the public, to starting our own organic stores. Whatever Greg plans to do with it, I know he deeply and desperately wants that farm.”
Mike swallowed, trying hard not to show his excitement. This was a real breakthrough in the case! “But Rams wouldn’t sell it to him?”
“No.”
“But you’re part of Ramsey’s family and you’re to marry Greg, so isn’t that the same thing as with Tess and me?”
Sara tightened her lips. “That’s the way I saw it, but Rams said no. It was the biggest fight Ramsey and I ever had. The biggest fight I’ve ever had with any human being—at least until I met you. He went on and on about how that place had been in his family since the eighteenth century, handed down from oldest son to the next. His father’s two older brothers died young, so that’s why it went to his father, Benjamin. Oh! When I think of the sob story he gave me! He even whined about how the Langs, father and son, had been caretakers of the place for …” She threw up her hands. “Since it was built for all I know. And to think that the real reason was that he’d promised to lease it to Tess—and probably because Rams doesn’t like the man I love. I could just hit Ramsey!”
Mike frowned in his best imitation of sympathy. “But you have no idea why Greg wants an old farm?”
Sara’s pretty face turned blush pink as she looked down at her hands. “Greg’s never said so, but he may want it for me. When I told him that I’d always liked the farm, he said he’d buy it for me.”
“Did he mention the place first or did you?” Mike knew he sounded like an interrogator, but he couldn’t help it.
Sara didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t remember. No. Wait. One time he told me he’d heard of it from somewhere else, before he even came to Edilean.”
“Tess didn’t say anything to me about your asking Rams for the farm.”
“If I know my cousin, he didn’t tell her. Do you have any idea how many people have asked the McDowell family to sell that farm to them?”
“Why, no.” Mike was surprised. “I don’t know anything about it except that it’s falling down. Why would anybody want it?”
“The farmhouse was remodeled around the original cabin, so it’s still there. And the McDowell family has made sure every outbuilding has been kept up just enough to keep it standing.”
Mike knew his face was blank because he had no idea what she was talking about. Not a word of it made sense.
Sara’s voice slowed as she further explained. “The house was built in 1674, and when it was added on to, the old house was left inside, intact. The outbuildings are the same as they were when they were built.”
Mike was staring at her. “Are you saying that that farm has been left alone since 1674?”
“Pretty much.”
“Through the Revolutionary War and the Civil War?”
“And two world wars. My mother says it even survived the hippies in the ’70s, and that they were more invasive than Sherman.”
Mike was hardly listening to her. He didn’t know what the Vandlos were after, but his gut told him it had something to do with Merlin’s Farm. There was no other reason Stefan would want a farm. He wasn’t about to open a house to the public, that’s for sure—unless he and his family could pick the pockets of the visitors.
“So when do we go see it?” Sara asked.
“What?” Mike came out of his reverie.
“When do you and I go see your new home?”
“I don’t think it’s safe for you to go. Tess said old Brewster Lang carried a shotgun.” Mike didn’t want Sara near a piece of property the Vandlos wanted.
“He makes his living selling vegetables—especially heirloom tomatoes—to my mother. I’ll get her to make him leave on the day we want to visit.”
“And what excuse will you give her?”
“All I have to do is tell her I want to go with you and she’ll drive us there.” She gave Mike a hard look. “So you didn’t come here to break Greg and me up?”
This is where Mike was good: bald-faced lies. More than once he’d fooled lie detectors. “My sister nagged me into coming here to Edilean to sign papers—and she made me swear I’d use her apartment. My plan was to sneak in here, sign the papers the next day, then leave. Your being in this apartment was a surprise. You don’t think Tess
set it up between you and me, do you?” He hated selling out his sister, but right now it was necessary to make Sara trust him.
“Yes,” she said firmly, “I do. I think Tess called Luke, and the two of them arranged it all.”
“Now that I think about it, Tess was the one who told me to use the old tunnel instead of the front door.” He vowed to send his sister flowers—or maybe a few sapphires.
“Now I’m sure I’m going with you,” Sara said brightly. “Mr. Lang comes into town on Thursdays, day after tomorrow, for the Farmers’ Market, so that’s when we’ll go.”
“No, you can’t possibly go with me. I need to—”
Sara got off the couch. “Do you think those scallops were burned? I could eat a dozen of them. What can I do to help make dinner?” Turning, she left the living room to go back to the kitchen.
As Mike watched her leave, there was one thing he was sure of: Sara was not going with him. Until he found out a great deal more about this Merlin’s Farm, she wasn’t getting near the place. Of that, he was absolutely, totally certain.
6
ON THE DRIVE to Merlin’s Farm, Mike couldn’t help being pleased with himself. All through dinner last night, Sara had given him multiple reasons why she should join him on Thursday while Mr. Lang—as she called him—was at the Farmers’ Market. Mike had been polite, had even pretended to consider what she was saying, but the truth was, he’d never come close to wavering in his decision to not allow her to go.
However, to ensure that nothing went wrong, he decided to go a day early. That night, after the kitchen was cleaned up, he went outside to call Tess. He asked her to do whatever she needed to in order to secretly get Lang off the property the next day so Mike could make a thorough inspection without Sara knowing.
“I’ll call Luke,” she said. “He’s the only one who can manage the old man.”
“Luke seems to run this town.”
“I think it comes with owning the Big House. But then, knowing Edilean, it’s probably some leftover from medieval times. So you’ve been thinking of the farm?”
Scarlet Nights Page 8