by Kelly Lane
“Please, Eva, sit.” Ian motioned to the same group of high-backed leather chairs in the center of the room that we sat on during my last visit.
“This is going to sound a bit weird,” I said, seating myself, “but I’ve come across some documents, and I think there may be something illegal going on. Or at least something underhanded.”
Ian raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
I continued. “The documents seem to be about transactions involving land here in Abundance. And money. Big money, involving financial institutions all over the world.”
Ian’s eyes sharpened. Still, he waited.
“I’m not too knowledgeable about any of this sort of thing, and I was hoping you might be able to take a look at the documents, so you can explain to me what is going on.”
“Of course. I’m happy to help ye. Where are the papers?”
“Oh, right. Sorry. They’re on my phone.” I pulled my smartphone out of my pocket. “I took photos of everything when I . . . um . . . kind of stole a peek.”
“Ye stole a peek?”
“Yes, well . . . Look, I think this business might have something to do with the man who was murdered at our place, Dex Codman. And I’m pretty sure Detective Gibbit is about to arrest me for the murder. And I didn’t do it! I swear. So I’m trying to figure it all out before I get arrested for something I didn’t do.”
“Eva, I don’t doubt ye . . . I’m sure ye didn’t murder anybody. It’s definitely not yer nature. It’s laughable, really. But still, if it’s something illegal ye think is going on, then why aren’t ye talking to yer man, Buck? After all, he’s the law around here.”
“Buck and I . . . we had sort of a falling-out. He told me that he can’t help me.”
“Did he now?”
“Yes.”
“And why’s that? It seems to me if there’s something criminal going down around this county, the local sheriff’s the man ye need to be siding with, not against . . .”
“He’s angry because I hid some information from him.”
“Did ye now? And why would ye do such a thing?”
“Look . . . it’s complicated. I made some mistakes a long time ago, and when it was all over, I thought I could just sweep it all under the rug and no one would be the wiser. I was wrong. Now Buck found out about it, and he’s angry with me. Really angry. And it involved Dex Codman, the man who was murdered. So now, Buck says I’m on my own. And he means it.”
“Aye, that explains a bit of it, I suppose.”
“I’m so sorry. I would never bother you like this, really. However, I’ve gotten the sense that you know an awful lot about all the land sales going on around here.”
“Have ye now?”
“Yes. Like when I saw you at the Twiggs place. You were arguing . . . about the land.”
“Well, I’m not sure it’s the same sort of thing yer talking about, Eva. My beef with Elrod was about him leading everyone to believe that he found his brother Elroy dead after the poor man had shot himself to death by accident while cleaning his gun. I don’t believe it. In fact, I found it quite odd that Elroy died just hours after he left me, after signing an agreement, turning over his place to me in order to ensure it’d never be developed. Our agreement gave him lifetime rights, but the place was to be mine, once the legal stuff was worked out. And I had the papers filed on that day. Later, I found out that even before Elroy died, Elrod had signed an agreement for big bucks to sell the land to a foreign client of Dickey Dicer’s. The only way he could have accomplished that was if his brother, who owned the land, was dead. Clearly, as the last remaining Twigg, Elrod was counting on being the sole heir. Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on me already being the owner.”
“You see, you are knowledgeable about this kind of stuff. And Buck told me that you’re ‘connected.’”
For a moment, Ian looked surprised before he quickly gathered himself again.
“Did he now?”
Too much information, Eva.
Quickly, I said, “He didn’t tell me anything specific. Just that you were concerned about things.”
“Things?”
“He described you as sort of an advocate for preserving land.”
That’s broad enough, I think, not to alarm him. I need his help!
“I see.”
“I think, once you see these documents, you’ll understand what’s going on and you’ll know what to do. And if you can help me understand what’s going on, maybe I can figure out how Dex was involved and who really killed him and why, before Detective Gibbit arrests me.”
“Don’t fret, girl. Ye know I’m always in yer corner, happy to help ye, Eva. Always.” He smiled.
“Oh good, I’m so glad! I’m thinking the easiest way might be for you to download my photos, right from my smartphone?”
“Sure.”
I got up and handed him my phone. “Here. Don’t worry, there’s nothing else important on it.”
Ian took my phone in his hand and stood up. “If ye don’t mind, I’ll take this upstairs to my office where I have a computer. I can download yer photos there. It should only take a couple of minutes.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll be back when it’s done. Would ye like something to drink or a snack while ye wait?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.”
Ian took my hand, giving it a squeeze.
“There’s no need to worry yerself. We’ll get it sorted out.”
He nodded before he turned and strode out of the room with my phone.
I sat still for a minute or so, taking in the manly library, this time in the daylight. Then, restless, I stood and started pacing around the room. The velvet curtain on the inside wall bothered me. I knew there was a painting behind it.
Why would someone cover a painting on a wall?
Maybe it was an important work of art. With Ian’s knowledge and appreciation of fine things, a collectible painting wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Certainly, he could afford one.
Maybe it’s a landscape painting? Like something from nineteenth-century Scotsman David Roberts. Or a big-time artist like Monet. Or even a Turner!
My imagination got the better of me. I couldn’t stand it. I walked up and grabbed the velvet curtain on the wall and yanked it aside.
Only, when I saw the painting, I nearly collapsed from shock. It wasn’t a landscape at all. Instead, it was a portrait. Of a young woman dressed in an elegant bridal dress. Standing in the countryside, with a noble hound at her side, she held the reins to a beautiful white horse.
And except for her jet-black hair, the young woman was a dead ringer for me.
“What the heck have you gone and done now?”
It was Precious. She was standing in the doorway with a scowl on her face, her arms folded across her chest. And she looked angry.
CHAPTER 50
Precious wasn’t angry.
Oh no.
She was really, really angry. So angry, in fact, that Ian rushed down from upstairs to see what all the commotion was about as Precious berated me for uncovering the portrait and being a “spoiled little busybody.”
And if I thought Precious’s reaction was weird, Ian’s reaction to the scene was even more bizarre. When he walked into the library and saw me standing next to the uncovered portrait, he turned white as a ghost. He just stared at me, and then at the portrait. He didn’t utter a word. Then he just turned on his heel and left the library.
“You see!” Precious scolded. “I told you to stay away from Mister Collier! Mind your p’s and q’s, I said. Why can’t you listen to anyone? You’re just messing up the poor man’s heart.”
I couldn’t make heads or tails of what Precious meant, but in the next moment, Mister Lurch appeared, and without a word, he handed me my phone as Precious was busy hustl
ing me to the front door. Next thing I knew, I was out on the doorstep.
“Mind your own business,” Precious warned. Then the great black door had closed behind me.
I’d lost Buck. And now, after revealing a mysterious portrait of a woman who could’ve easily been me, I’d lost Precious. And Ian. And I didn’t even know why.
It didn’t matter. They were all mad at me.
Worse still, I was sure that I was about to be arrested for killing Dex.
“I give up!”
I just sat down on the steps, about to have a good cry.
Then I remembered the stupid swamp tour. Daphne was expecting me to go, in just a little while. It was the last thing I wanted to think about.
Then it occurred to me that having to go on the swamp tour that afternoon with the crowd from Boston would not only be a relief from all my own drama, but also, it would be a perfect time to question Wiggy, Claudia, Coop, and Spencer about what it was they were up to. Quite literally, there’d be nowhere for them to go or to hide while I asked them questions. And although I hadn’t figured out exactly what they’d been up to, maybe I didn’t need to. Certainly, I knew enough to fake it.
I was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery and figure out who killed Dex. Even if I had to do it alone.
Game on.
I wiped my tears on my sleeve and headed home.
CHAPTER 51
If I’d thought that nothing could’ve been more bizarre than my morning at Greatwoods, then I’d have been wrong.
We arrived at the Taylor Farm and were standing on the pier that jutted into the swampy Snake River. It was the same rickety old pier that Buck had taken me to years ago to watch the fireworks that his friends shot off from Alligator Island. I smiled, remembering the good times. Not much had changed at the Taylor place in all the years I’d been away, except someone had erected a roof over the length of the pier and added some steps at the end that went down into the water. That’s where Skeets had tied up his three canoes.
“Where’s the fancy airboat that we’re taking?” asked Spencer. “I’ve always wanted to go out on an airboat.” He held up his smartphone and snapped a selfie, standing next to the river.
“No airboat today!” Skeets answered breezily. He carried a machete and a small ice cooler into one of the canoes. “You folks asked for a special tour, so I’m givin’ you a right up close and personal one. Airboat’s too noisy to fully experience nature. Plus, it’s too big to get down this little river, and you all said this is what you wanted to see.”
I had a pretty good idea about what really happened to the airboat: Skeets Diggs had fatally damaged it when he’d run it into the tree limb outside his sister’s Naturist B&B. So—as Skeets was unwilling to give up his one-hundred-dollar-per-person fee for the three-hour swamp tour—he’d made do by lashing three red canoes together.
Yup, he’d actually lashed them together to make a sort of canoe raft.
Then, much to my amusement, via a hand-built wooden bracket hanging off one side of the farthest canoe from the pier, Skeets mounted a 1938 Johnson Sea Horse 1.1 horsepower outboard motor.
That was how nine of us—Skeets and his sister, Pottie Moss, along with the four Bostoners, plus Charlene and Darlene and I—were to travel together down Snake River, out into the Big Swamp, and over to Alligator Island. In three fifteen-foot-long canoes, tied together, side by side, powered by an antique motor with as much juice as a kitchen blender.
I slammed my hand on my forehead, remembering the old Gilligan’s Island television show theme song about a bunch of tourists stranded on an island after setting out on a quick three-hour tour. The ominous tune played in my head.
A three-hour tour . . . a three-hour tour . . .
“Load up, folks!” Skeets cried out merrily. “We ain’t got all day! Only got three hours to get out, eat, and get back!”
A three-hour tour . . .
I figured it’d take us at least forty minutes, maybe an hour, to get to Alligator Island with the little putt-putt engine. And it’d take us an equal amount of time to return. That didn’t leave much more than an hour for the picnic that the twins and I had to set up and serve. And, of course, it was super hot and muggy that afternoon, and the bugs were everywhere. I was happy I’d remembered to apply bug spray before leaving home. Regardless, it was going to be a killer afternoon.
Still, it was better than being arrested for murder.
I reminded myself that I needed to stay focused. My main objective was to glean information about Dex’s death, and whatever else I could about the land shenanigans. And already, I’d learned something. The Boston crowd had requested specifically to travel down Snake River. And I had the idea that it wasn’t so much Snake River they’d wanted to see, but instead, the land abutting the river. And it just so happened that most of that land was part of the Taylor Farm. And, as I’d overheard at the Roadhouse, the Taylor Farm was for sale.
I remembered Pervis in the Roadhouse saying there was a contract coming in on the place . . . Could it be the Bostoners had already made an agreement? Or maybe it’d been Ian?
Don’t think about Ian now.
Thinking about Ian—likewise, Buck and Precious—upset me.
Focus, Eva.
“Ma’am,” said Skeets, reaching out to take Claudia’s hand, “I’d like to have you sit in the center of the farthest canoe, the one with the engine.”
“I can’t do this,” cried Claudia, grabbing her chest. “I can’t swim. And I’m afraid of this place.”
Apparently, unbeknownst to everyone until the moment she tried to step off the dock into the canoes, Claudia was deathly afraid of water. Of course, the giant orange life preserver she’d insisted on wearing should’ve been a clue. Still, even the life jacket she wore, like a giant, puffy vest over her safari suit, didn’t calm her. Hyperventilating, she bent over, gasping for air.
Pottie Moss opened a small cooler at her feet and pulled out a paper bag, handing it to Claudia.
“I brought it for leftovers,” Pottie Moss explained to whomever would listen. “I hear the chef at Knox Plantation is a-mazing.”
Immediately, Claudia put the bag to her face and began huffing into it.
“It’s alright, darlin’,” said Pottie Moss. She put a hand on Claudia’s shoulder. “It’ll all be over before y’all know it. I promise.” Then she turned to the rest of the crowd and said, “And we ain’t had a gator eat no one yet! Right, Skeets?”
Claudia staggered backward.
“You said it, Pottie Moss!” Skeets laughed.
Standing next to me, holding our own Knox Plantation coolers, the twins giggled. I shot them a quick look.
The twins, following Daphne’s official Knox Plantation protocol, wore their Southern belle uniforms, the little black minidresses with crinoline skirts and frilly white aprons. I admit, acknowledging the complete inappropriateness for their swampy circumstances, the petite duo was darling as all get-out, with their matching long, dark hair, pretty heart-shaped, freckled faces, and healthy young bodies. Still, the shorty-short skirts and ruffled, off-the-shoulder tops exposed the twins’ arms and legs to gazillions of hungry bugs and mosquitos. And apparently, they hadn’t worn bug repellent. So the girls could barely function, as they kept kicking and slapping at the bugs on their arms and legs.
“Let’s load up!” cried Skeets. With long jeans, boots, and a cap with an alligator motif on it, he wore a wifebeater-style sleeveless tee shirt that looked like it could’ve used some bleach during the last hundred washes. Still, it was probably comfy pulled down over his potbelly. I marveled at how the bugs didn’t seem to bother him at all.
“There’s more than four hundred different species of vertebrates, including more than two hundred varieties of birds and more than sixty different reptiles, livin’ in this swamp. And we ain’t gonna see any of ’em just settin
’ here on the pier. Let’s go!” Skeets ordered.
“Okay, let’s climb aboard, folks,” said Wiggy. “Where do you want us, Mister Skeets?”
“It’s Skeets. Just call me Skeets. And you, sir, are anchoring boat number two . . . right there, if you wouldn’t mind just climbing in and taking the seat in the stern. Thank you, sir.”
Wearing his Smokey Bear outfit, along with a pair of Top-Sider moccasins, heavyset Wiggy crashed down into the center canoe in the three-boat “raft,” sloshing the river water and making waves.
“Oh my . . .” cried Claudia. She still hadn’t stepped off the pier. “I’m going to throw up.”
“Welcome, folks! Welcome to Skeets’s Swamp Tours and the wonderful world of the Big Swamp, home of alligators, water moccasins, and black bears! We promise you’ll see at least one of these majestic creatures, or you’ll get your money back!”
Skeets sounded like a circus hawker.
“I just love nature,” said Spencer, holding his phone up to his face. It looked like he was playing a game.
Pottie Moss gave him a funny look, as Spencer, never looking up from his phone, stepped from one canoe to the other, finally settling into the bow of the farthest boat.
“C’mon, Claudia,” said Coop. “Man up.”
“The swamp is also home to many species of birds, like the sandhill crane, anhinga, and osprey,” announced Skeets. “Not to mention the barred owl, great blue heron, yellow-crowned night heron, red-billed woodpecker, great egret, and white ibis. You’ll see many of these birds today. In fact . . . why, look, folks! There’s a red-billed woodpecker right over there!”
He pointed to a tree on the other side of the narrow, murky river. No one looked.
As Skeets pointed and talked, the twins, Charlene and Darlene, were busy slapping themselves and helping me load the canoe closest to the pier with all the fixings and setup for the picnic supper on Alligator Island. We had several coolers, a case of beer, a box, two great big canvas bags, and seven bags of ice.
“C’mon, deary,” Pottie Moss said to Claudia, “let’s get you into the canoe over there. If you just step in, I promise you no one will ever ask you to do another thing today.”