by Kelly Lane
Oh yeah.
Dex.
“Oh. That,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Yes. All in all, the day’s been pretty awful, actually.” And it’ll probably get worse. “How did you hear?”
“Precious. She’s like communications central. Ye know how the folks in town just love to blether.”
“Blether? I’m afraid it’s kind of an Abundance ritual.”
“Precious doesn’t miss a beat of it, mind ye. Best estate manager a man could have. Friend, too. Anyway, she told me all about yer unfortunate discovery earlier today. Seems that ye knew the bloke?”
“Something like that.” I bit my lip. “A long time ago. I hadn’t seen him in years.”
“Aye.” Ian nodded. “I’m sorry fer yer loss.”
Ian studied me. I tried to give away nothing. Still, as he looked me over I realized that he was staring at my fists. Without realizing it, I’d clenched them when we’d started talking about Dex.
After a long moment, Ian smiled and said, “Shall we head back?”
“Sure. As long as I haven’t cut short your visit here.”
We started walking. I nodded to the fancy rifle he carried under his arm. It looked antique. Only it had a modern, big, fancy scope mounted on top of it.
“Are you hunting?” I asked. It was a loaded question, of course.
“Nah. ’Tisn’t the season fer it.”
I pressed him. “I’m not into guns, at all. Still, it’s impossible not to notice your fancy rifle. Really, I’ve never seen anything like it, with double triggers and all!”
Ian stopped and held out the piece so I could get a better look. It really was a marvelous firearm. Almost like art.
“I love all the hand engraving on the bolt handle and knob. And all the floral and tendril engraving on the wood,” I gushed as I turned over the old firearm, examining it more closely. It really was spectacular. “Wow . . . there’s engraving everywhere . . . on the wood, the silver . . . the checkered panels with fleur-de-lis accents. And the engraved silver on the floor plate . . . Is that a woodland scene, with a stag and deer? This is a gorgeous piece.”
“I’m glad ye appreciate it. I’ve a wee collection of antique firearms back at home. This is one of my favorites. It’s a prewar custom Sempert & Krieghoff. German.”
“So if you weren’t hunting”—I raised my eyebrows—“then . . . ?” I handed the gun back to Ian.
“I was just enjoyin’ the afternoon, roamin’ the land, and havin’ a look-see.”
“A look-see?” I teased. “Is that Scottish for snooping around? Are you thinking about buying Twiggs Creek Farm? Is that why you were chatting with Elrod?” Good one, Eva. You’re oh-so-clever, calling their slow burn of a conversation “chatting.”
Ian looked thoughtful as we began walking across the field again. Still, he didn’t answer.
“It’s certainly lovely out here,” I added, for good measure.
Isn’t anyone going to mention the rifle shot?
Finally, Ian laughed. It was a great big laugh. In that moment, it occurred to me that Ian’s expressions usually weren’t indicative of a happy, laughy person. Instead, he often appeared . . . troubled. Distracted. Intense. Some might even say broody. Almost never lighthearted or content. And yet, when he wanted to, he had such a wonderful sense of humor.
Just like all those irresistible Bond types.
“I was wondering when you’d find the nerve to ask,” he said with a smile. He reached out and held some thistle aside as I passed through the prickly weeds. “I’m here because I saw on my night cam some folks running about here during the night. And I thought I’d come down here today for a look-see, to figure out what they’d been up to. I’m carrying the rifle because there’s been reports of a mama bear and two cubs runnin’ about these parts. A person can’t be too careful, ye know. Besides”—he tapped the big fancy scope mounted to the old rifle—“the scope is handy. Lets me see far away. That’s how I knew it was you, comin’ down from the road, before I met up with Elrod.”
His answer sounded like a plausible reason to be carrying a rifle with a monster scope in the open wilderness when it wasn’t hunting season. Still, why would Ian Collier have a night camera on the Twiggs property? And still, there was the whole, as-yet-unspoken-about incident with Elrod and Mister Lurch. I looked up at Ian’s ruggedly elegant face.
Do you think I didn’t notice that my head almost blew off?
I tried to keep up with him as he strode quickly across the field, heading toward the road. Of course, what Ian was doing there wasn’t any of my business. Still, being my nosy self, I figured it couldn’t hurt to be direct and ask. Besides, someone had shot a rifle that could’ve easily killed me. Unspoken understanding or not, I deserved an explanation.
Anyone would.
“Wait! What about Elrod?” I asked, trotting to keep up. “The rifle shot!”
Ian kept walking.
“Ye were always safe, Eva. Mister Lurch is a dead-eye shot. I’m sorry if we frightened ye. He and I just needed to sort out a few things with Mister Twiggs. That’s all,” he said. After a moment he continued. “Elrod Twiggs has been poaching and running stills on this land for years. I grant ye, he’s even got a marijuana plot out here somewhere; I just haven’t found it yet.”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve heard. Still, I don’t understand,” I said. “Isn’t this his land? Elrod’s, I mean. After his brother died, didn’t Elrod inherit everything? I remember he used to have some sort of shack down on the river, right? And why would you have a night camera out here?”
“Yer right, this land always belonged to Elrod’s brother, Elroy. He was a good man. And we had an arrangement. The place officially became mine last week.”
“So you own the Twiggs place now?”
“Aye, I do.”
“I see.” I thought for a moment as we continued walking. We were in the island of shaded forest between the fields. “So, I guess the Dicers just forgot to remove their for sale sign out on the road after you bought the farm?”
Ian stopped. “Elroy and I’d had our agreement in place before he died. Regardless, Elrod decided the property was his to sell. It wasn’t. Most likely, the Dicers are pissed at me for owning property they thought they’d be selling for an absurdly inflated price to someone from overseas, earning themselves a fat commission.”
“I see.”
“Determined to squeeze whatever they can for themselves, no doubt, they’re now determined to at least have folks believe they’re in on the deal. My deal. They’ll leave their sign on the road until I toss it. Which will be momentarily.”
“Right. No love lost between you and the Dicers . . .”
“Don’t get me started.”
Ian set his jaw as we marched through the trees. Finally, I said, “I’m just grateful to have found you out here. It’d have taken me an hour or more to walk home.”
Ian stopped and turned to face me. His expression was completely matter-of-fact. With his rifle tucked under his arm, he grasped both my hands and held them tight within his big hands, close to his chest.
“I’m sorry, Eva, we frightened ye earlier in the field. Ye know I’d never let anything happen to ye.”
I nodded.
“Now, ye won’t need to mention to anyone what it is ye saw happen out here today. About Mister Lurch and all, now, will ye?”
“Of course I won’t say a word,” I said. “Besides, I get it. This is your property now. I’ll just think of it like . . . Vegas.”
“Las Vegas?”
“Yes, you know, like the city’s marketing slogan: ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’ Get it? From now on, we’ll just say, ‘What happens on Twiggs Creek Farm stays on Twiggs Creek Farm.’”
Ian laughed as he put his free arm around me and gave me a warm bear hug, nestling me in the crook
of his arm.
“Aye, Eva. Sounds like a plan.”
I let my head fall against his chest and inhaled his seductive scent for just a moment too long. My insides did a few excited flips as he let me rest there for a moment or two—I could’ve stayed there forever—safe and warm, before Ian pulled me away and surprised me by pressing his lips against my cheek.
“’Tis a right bonnie place out here, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“It’d be a shame if it were to fall into the wrong hands.”
I nodded again. Although I had no idea what he was talking about.
Wrong hands?
Ian held me another moment as he took in the field behind us. I spun around to see that the fog was beginning to lift.
“Now let’s get ye back on home before that ol’ mama bear catches a whiff of us.”
CHAPTER 19
Clearly, my sister Pep was in her element. Holding court behind a bar made from old railroad ties covered with about fifty layers of varnish, Pep chitchatted and flirted good-naturedly with patrons while serving them drinks. Wafting through cigar and cigarette smoke, I detected an underlying odor of old fruit, damp wood, and liquor-soaked bar towels. Not that my sister didn’t keep her workspace spic-and-span. She did. It’s just that decades of booze and food spills were ingrained in every soggy nook and cranny of the joint.
I can’t believe I let Precious twist my arm into coming here tonight.
Seated at the very end of the Roadhouse bar, waiting for Precious to return from the ladies’ room, I’d been amusing myself by eavesdropping on other people’s conversations as I twizzled a little red stirrer in my iced cola.
Pep turned and reached way up to a top shelf in front of a mirrored wall that was jam-packed with booze bottles. After grabbing an unopened bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve 15 Year Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, she quickly opened it before slamming a speed pourer into the vessel. She upturned the pricey bottle high into the air, and amber liquid streamed from the speed pourer. My sister’s big, soulful gray eyes sparkled under the spotlights as she moved the upturned booze bottle over four shot glasses and set one next to the other in a semicircle on a cork-lined tray. She never spilled a drop. All the while she kept one eye on the crowded, smoke-filled barroom around us. With her humor and quick smile, not to mention her curvaceous little figure, she was every man’s dream . . . at least for that Saturday night.
And she knew it.
Next to me at the bar, a group of dusty “regulars” seated on bentwood stools ogled their favorite platinum blonde with her short, boyish haircut, as she worked the drinks and the crowd.
“Ooooh-weee!” cried a man on the other side of the empty seat next to me. Wearing jeans and a tattered long-sleeved shirt, he set his grimy baseball cap, riddled with dirt, on the bar near his arm. Pointing a calloused finger to the bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s bourbon, he grinned. “Sure ya don’t wanna give ol’ Pervis Jessup a little taste, Miss Pep? Just to make sure it’s not gone bad, of course . . .”
Pervis, probably in his sixties, winked as he and his friends seated alongside him rubbed elbows and laughed together.
“I’m a beer man myself, but that bottle there must be something,” cried the weatherworn farmer seated next to Pervis. “It’s some pricey stuff, I hear!” Small and scruffy-looking, the farmer wore tan Carhartt overalls. He swigged the last drops of beer from his bottle.
“Pervis, I’d be happy to give y’all the whole bottle,” said Pep with a laugh, “if I thought you’d pay for it. The tip alone might buy me a new air impact wrench. Still, I know better, sweetheart.”
She patted Pervis on the hand before moving down the bar to grab a fresh pile of cocktail napkins. Seated about halfway down to my left was a big man with a white beard dressed in a worn plaid shirt and overalls—I likened him to a farmy Santa Claus. He let out a big belly laugh as he slammed his beer down, leaned over the bar, and pointed to Pervis.
“Pervis, you’ll never get a lick of that stuff, ’cause you’re tighter than a bull’s ass at fly time!”
“And ya still don’t have a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of!” shouted a tidy fellow in pressed jeans and a faded chambray shirt, seated between the Carhartt man and Santa Claus. He hee-hawed a laugh as Santa Claus smacked him on the back.
“You got that right, Jimmy Ray!” said Santa Claus between chuckles.
The men roared together, slapping their hands on the bar before playfully whacking one another on their shoulders. Pep grabbed a handful of beer bottles from the cooler behind her, snapped off the caps, and placed a fresh beer in front of each man.
“Miss Pep, I love ya, darlin’!” purred Pervis.
“I love you, too, Pervis. Now drink up, hon, so I can afford to buy me a Millermatic 252 MIG welder for Daddy’s old Farmall M tractor. I’m aimin’ to fix it up, and you’re gonna help me do it, sweetcakes.”
“Your daddy always told me,” said Pervis with a wink, “that if something needed fixin’ on the farm, his daughter Pep was the man fer the job!” He took a swig of beer and laughed at himself.
“You get yourself a fancy welder like that, sweetheart, you let me know. I’ll have you busy as a beaver over at my place. I got tons of equipment that needs work,” said the farmy Santa Claus.
“Me, too,” said Pervis.
“Boys, it’s a deal,” said Pep, laughing. “Now drink up!”
Pep patted each man on his hand before slapping her pile of napkins on the tray with the four shots of bourbon. She picked up the tray and rounded the end of the bar, passing me, on her way to a table buried somewhere in the boisterous crowd behind me.
It was about nine thirty on Saturday night, and the Roadhouse was rocking. Decorated with dark-stained wood and railroad memorabilia, the dingy establishment was full up with folks seated on cheap bentwood chairs around sticky, carved-up wooden tables. Just down the road from the chemical plant, on the seedier side of town next to some abandoned railroad tracks not too far from the Big Swamp, the local watering hole was located inside a defunct railroad station. Suntanned farmers and laborers in grime-infused jeans and overalls wearing ball caps and long-sleeved plaid and chambray shirts mingled with women and men dressed in casual business attire—village retailers, most likely—along with folks in blue uniforms sporting Climax Chemical Company logos, as well as the younger set of social “movers and shakers,” out on the town for a Saturday date night.
Really, almost everyone in town stopped by the Roadhouse at one time or another. Except my sister Daphne, of course. She’d rather have her fingernails pulled out than step foot in a “dive” like the Roadhouse.
Still, for the rest of Abundance County, the Roadhouse was the place to be and to be seen, especially on weekends. Mostly because of the music. Not to mention the fact that it was the only bar in town. And as the favorite haunt for Abundance County’s sheriff’s deputies, the official late-night closing hours per county regulations were often . . . overlooked on weekends.
Serving simple tavern-style meals and late-night takeout, as long as you didn’t mind a little grease with everything, the dive was never busier than on weekend nights when there was a live band in the house. In one corner of the smoky room, on a small plywood stage, a trio of men with tattooed arms and footlong beards, dressed in black jeans and cowboy boots, worked to set up their instruments—I saw an electric guitar, a bass, one man carried a fiddle case—behind big speakers that read PEAVEY. A fabric sign that read THE CROP PICKERS hung crookedly on the wall behind the band as they crawled around the tiny stage opening cases and plugging in cords.
“Y’all are mighty chipper tonight,” said Pep, returning to the men at the bar. She gave me a wink. “Peanut, are y’all doin’ some celebratin’ or something?”
Peanut—the man who looked like Santa Claus—gulped the last dregs of his beer before slam
ming the empty bottle on the counter. After exhaling with a satisfied sigh, he wiped his sleeve across his beard.
“I reckon we are, darlin’. Aren’t we, boys?”
The other two men—like Pervis and Peanut—appeared to be in their sixties, or maybe even well-preserved seventies. They nodded in unison, before downing the last of their bottled beers.
“Yep.”
Beyond Peanut, a bedraggled mechanic, not much older than I was, with muscular shoulders, sinewy hands, and a grease-stained tee shirt, grabbed a worn cocktail napkin. He wiped a dribble of beer from his weathered lips before tossing the napkin on the counter.
“Ya see, Miss Pep,” said Peanut. “Jimmy Ray, here, just closed on his farm. Three generations and one hundred years of hard work . . . a lifetime . . . all gone. Sold to some foreigners. Ain’t that right, Jimmy Ray?” He whacked Jimmy Ray on the back again. “How do ya feel, buddy?”
“I feel rich, that’s how I feel,” Jimmy Ray said with a silly grin, wiping a hand on his Carhartts.
“Sold your pappy’s farm?” Pep interrupted.
Jimmy Ray belched. Seems that was enough of an acknowledgment for Pep.
“Well, congratulations, Jimmy Ray,” said Pep. “I didn’t know you were plannin’ on retiring, hon. How ’bout a round of drinks, on me? Since this is an extra-special occasion, how ’bout some shots of Savannah 88 bourbon? Sound alright?”
The men at the bar mumbled and nodded in unison.
“Oh, waitron!” a man barked from the far corner in the room.
Pep grabbed several glasses and the Savannah 88 bottle from behind the bar and began pouring.
“Waitron!” shouted the man from the corner again. Even in the crowded room, his voice cut through the noise. He had a distinctly Northern accent. “Another round! And make it pronto!”
That was rude . . .
I started to turn when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“The ladies’ room is a pisser!” cried Precious, sliding onto the barstool next to me. “Every time I come to this joint I forget how nasty it is. I must be dumber than a sack of hammers ’cause I keep comin’ back for more.” She rolled her eyes. “Why, it was so dark in there that I could barely find myself in the mirror. Naturally, touching anything was completely outta the question . . .”