Barn Burner (Jubilant Falls series Book 1)

by Debra Gaskill

  “You got fired, she threw you out and now you’ve come back to Jubilant Falls begging Suzanne—and me— to take you back.”

  “Pretty much.”

  He really did sound beaten, Addison thought as she inhaled deeply on her cigarette. That could be a good thing. Maybe now he’d keep his pecker in his pants.

  “Well, I know you want your old job back and I think you need to know that every woman in your life isn’t as thrilled that you came back,” she said, exhaling toward the ceiling. “I’m not going to even consider you for the position, John. You made too many serious mistakes while you were here.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re a good writer John and a good reporter. You just came to the end of your time here at the Journal-Gazette.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “Put Suzanne back on the phone.”

  “Hello, Penny? Are you going to interview him?”

  “No, Suzanne, I’m not.”

  “Penny!”

  “I think you know why I can’t,” Addison said. “There’s got to be something available in Collitstown at the Daily Call or God knows there’s always PR. Both of those would pay more than I could ever offer. If you guys are so determined to pick up and start again—and God knows why the hell you’d take him back, Suzanne—then maybe it’s time for a new professional start as well.”

  Suzanne was silent. “You’re pissed, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not my placed to get pissed. You need to make those choices, not me.”

  “He’s the father of my boys, Penny.”

  “And what about the other women? Can you live with that?”

  She was silent. “We have to work through that yet.”

  “And the bedroom is a hell of a place for that dialogue to start. I hope to God Porter got tested for whatever souvenirs he might be bringing back to you.” Addison looked up to see Duncan poking his head through the barely opened screen door. “Duncan’s coming in from the barn. I gotta go.” She hung up without a good-bye.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  “Suzanne.” Addison ground her cigarette into the ashtray. “John’s back.”

  “Is that a good thing?” Duncan had never really liked Porter, tolerating him only for his wife’s friend’s sake.

  “I don’t know, Dunk. I don’t think so. He’s over there and they’re going at it like a couple of teenagers.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll work it out. Come out here—I want you to see something.”

  Taking her hand, Duncan led Addison out to the paddock behind the barn. There stood Isabella, her long red hair pulled through the back of a baseball cap and her face smudged with dirt, happily bottle-feeding a new Holstein calf. She was wearing a pair of cut off shorts and tee shirt. Cotton socks peeked from the tops of her brown lace-up work boots. Her face was radiant as the calf sucked the bottle, one of Addison’s quart-size Mason jars with a large pink nipple on it. When the bottle was empty, Isabella pulled it from the calf’s mouth. Still hungry, he poked at Isabella, his long pink tongue trying to find more milk. With a squeal, Isabella let him suck on her fingers.

  “Mom, look! He was just born yesterday and already he’s starving!” Isabella scratched the calf’s throat. “What should we name him?”

  “His ear tag says 542. That works for me,” her father answered, teasing.

  “Oh, Dad!” Any place else this exchange would have been unremarkable. Now, the moment seemed nearly miraculous.

  Addison smiled. For any other farm family in Plummer County, the scene wasn’t colored with previous suicide attempts or lifelong medication, she thought to herself. “This was the way things used to be, isn’t it? Our daughter enjoying life again.”

  “I knew you’d want to see this,” Duncan slipped his arm around his wife’s shoulder. Softly, he whispered in her ear: “She’s doing fine, Penny. The stitches came out of her wrists today. The scars still look really bad, but the doc says they’ll fade over time.”

  “We’re lucky we still have her,” she answered. “Will we ever get beyond that? Will it ever become just a bad memory?”

  Duncan squeezed her shoulder in reply and pointed toward the calf. “That’s one good lookin’ bull calf, isn’t it?”

  ”He’s a little late, though, isn’t he?” Addison’s attention turned to the black and white calf, the remnants of his umbilical cord stained red with iodine. Usually, Duncan made sure all the calves were born in the bitter months of February and March. The calves would be separated from their mothers early on and placed in stalls to be bottle-fed. Within a few months, when they were eating grain, the males would be sold to a feedlot where they would be fattened up and sold for veal. Duncan usually reserved a few for the local 4H clubs so the kids could raise them and sell them at the county fair.

  “Yeah. This is Belva’s calf, the one we had artificially inseminated in the fall. I was hoping for a male so we’ll have a new bull to use.”

  Addison nodded. “Nothing like new blood.” Like many farmers, whether they raised hogs or cattle, a few years of breeding all the females to a single male could result in a barn full of daughters—and a male you couldn’t use on that next generation.

  Often, dairy farmers took their heifers to firms that specialized in bovine artificial insemination, where vials of semen from genetically diverse bulls were kept. Duncan had taken his prize heifer, Belva, to such a place and placed his hope that the AI procedure, as it was called, would result in a bull he could use on any of his females.

  “Yeah. A chance to start again.” Duncan drew his wife close and kissed Addison’s forehead. “Just like Isabella… or maybe John and Suzanne Porter?”

  “Oh, don’t make me gag!” She shoved him away playfully.

  “What’s going on with the Thorn story?”

  Briefly, Addison shared her suspicions about Tina Andersen and Rachel Wiseman, how she’d shared those same thoughts with Gary McGinnis and she wasn’t sure if he’d believed her.

  “Well, he may know something you don’t. Gary’s a sharp guy. He may not be telling you everything he knows.”

  “But we’re old friends! Why wouldn’t he?”

  “Because you’re still the editor of the paper, Penny. Because he doesn’t want some off-hand comments he makes to end up being tomorrow’s headline.”

  “I’m always really carefull with Gary. I make sure it’s real clear who’s on or off the record.”

  “Well, he’s still a cop. He can’t bare his soul to you.”

  “I guess.” She turned back to look at Isabella, involuntarily gasping as she watched the girl critically examining her scarred wrists as #542 rubbed up against her leg.

  Realizing she was being watched, Isabella looked up at her mother, a sad half smile on her face. In a few strides, Addison was at the paddock fence, reaching with one hand for the scarred wrists, hooking her other arm around her daughter’s neck and drawing her cheek close to her own.

  “Baby, baby, baby,” she whispered.

  Isabella pushed away. “Mom, I’m all right. OK? I’m not going to do it again. I just wanted to see what the scars looked like.”

  Chastened, Addison took the girl’s hands in her own and turned them over to see the healed wrists. The scars were red and angry and extended across both wrists. Addison tried to smile, to cover her horror at the remnants of what her daughter had tried to do to herself.

  “Maybe a little Vitamin E cream will fade them,” she said, trying to keep her voice from quivering. “Put a little on each night and in a few months, they’ll look a lot better.”

  “Yeah.” Isabella pulled her arms back. “I’m going to put the calf back in the barn and go inside. I’m really OK, Mom. You don’t have to worry.”

  Addison nodded and watched her daughter coax the calf back into the barn. “Sorry,” she said.

  She turned to see a Crown Victoria rumbling up the driveway, spewing gravel and dust behind it. The setting sun glowed orange and yellow around the car’s s
ilhouette, obscuring the license plate and making the car look black.

  “Who is that?” Duncan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Addison replied. She began to move at a trot from the barn toward the house. “I can’t tell. Looks like one of the cops’ Crown Vics, though,” she called back to her husband. “Let me go see.”

  The Crown Vic came to a stop at the back door and Gary McGinnis stepped out of the driver’s side. He was wearing the same Oxford shirt and khaki pants he’d had on earlier in the afternoon when Addison shared her concerns with him. His badge and his service revolver hung from his belt.

  “Gary, what’s up?” Addison asked.

  “Remember what you were telling me about Andersen and Wiseman this afternoon?” McGinnis pulled a small notebook from his shirt pocket.

  “Yeah. You didn’t believe me.”

  “Well, I’m here to apologize.”

  “For what? It’s not the first time you’ve told me I’m on the wrong track.”

  “You may not be.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. We got a search warrant for Tina Andersen’s car. In the trunk we found the pistol you said she owned. Ballistics say it’s the murder weapon for both Ripsmatta and Castlewheel.”

  “Oh, Gary, that’s great!” Addison wanted to hug him, but refrained. Instead, she began to pepper him with questions. “Did you arrest her? What did she say? Did she confess? Does she have Lyndzee Thorn? Have you talked to Wiseman yet?”

  Gary held up his hands to slow her down. “Hang on, Penny, there’s more. Remember we couldn’t establish a connection between the women and Castlewheel and Ripsmatta?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, turns out, according to David Horatio, Golgotha students are required to do some kind of community service. One of those projects is the college’s Second Chance ministry. They offer basic health care, job assistance and a food pantry to felons who have been released back into the community. Wiseman was the doctor and Andersen worked in the office. Records indicate both men came there for food and health care in the last six months.”

  Addison let out a whoop. “I knew it! I knew it! So tell me what they said when you confronted them with that little tidbit?”

  “It’s not that easy. We went to Tina Andersen’s dorm and she wasn’t there. We then went to Rachel Wiseman’s townhouse and she wasn’t there either. Both women are gone.”

  Chapter 34

  “Talley, this isn’t going home. You said we’d go home.”

  After leaving the Mexicans’ camp, the duo had hitched another ride in the back of yet another pick-up truck, down a road made dark even through the late-day sun by large arching trees, a road where the black tar had worn so thin, white pearls of asphalt showed through the roadbed. They’d been let off in front of a deep-rutted dirt road, closed off by rickety wooden gates. The tall tattered man smiled and pushed open one of the gates.

  “For me, Miss Lyndzee, this is home,” he smiled a toothless grin through his raggedy gray beard. “This is where I stay in the winter when I don’t got no place else to stay.”

  They walked a bit down the dirt road. Lyndzee stopped, her mouth falling open at the large old barn in front of her. To the left of the barn, a stone foundation from an old farmhouse stood alone, covered only in the umbrella of the collapsed roof. A stone fireplace and chimney pointed skyward, as if to indicate where the previous tenants now resided.

  A gently sloping incline led up to the barn’s battered double doors. Wood and shingles were missing from the roof and the upright exterior boards, at least those that remained, were long bare of paint, battered and dark from years of weather and neglect.

  “But Talley, I want to go home. My mommy and daddy, I know they’re looking for me!” Lyndzee grabbed his hand and tugged him back toward the road. “You told me we’d go home soon!”

  Suddenly, the man pulled at the shoulder of his jacket as if to remove some invisible hand, whirling away from the girl. Lyndzee watched as he mouthed words and gestured to some unseen person as if to halt their interruption. Sternly he turned back toward her.

  “I know I did, Miss Lyndzee, but they’re telling me that the threat is still out there. My orders are to keep you here until the time is right.” Turning with military precision, Talley stepped with sharp determination toward the ramshackle barn.

  Lyndzee sighed as she fell in step behind him. Maybe he was right. Maybe she should listen to him. No matter how badly she wanted to go home, the last time she didn’t do what he told her to, she ended up in that awful house, getting beaten by Roy and threatened by Tina.

  Tina! Lyndzee shook her head in confusion. The pretty young girl who tucked her in at night when Mommy couldn’t, who packed her lunch for school and who talked to her about Jesus. Why would she want to hurt her? And why was she so mad at Mommy and Daddy?

  The barn door creaked as Talley pushed it open, interrupting Lyndzee’s thoughts.

  “Is it going to fall down on our heads?” she asked as they stepped into the semi-darkness. Talley smiled and beckoned for her to follow him.

  The exterior was rough and ramshackle; inside however, the floors were sturdy and intact. Stacks of moldy straw and hay hid an abandoned tractor and, in a back corner, a set of steps. Lyndzee followed him down the stairs into a lower level, filled with a double row of stalls, some gated with heavy tubular gates. Talley stepped aside to proudly show her two stalls that had been converted into living quarters.

  A small battered table sat in one stall with a Coleman camping lantern atop it. Bricks and chunks of plywood helped the table stand level on the uneven dirt floor. Bales of straw served as a bed or seats around the table. In the opposite stall, old saddle blankets were folded neatly on another bale and a battered bicycled leaned against the wall.

  “You live here?” Lyndzee asked in wonder.

  “I like to stay in this barn. It’s warm in the winter,” Talley said simply. “This is where we’ll stay till we get the word it’s safe.”

  Lyndzee sank onto a bale of straw and sighed. “I really want to go home, Talley. You saved me, I know, but I want to go home,” her voice began to stretch into a long high-pitched whine. “It’s dirty, I’m hungry, and I just wanna go ho-o-o-o-o-ome.” Tears began to roll down the girl’s cheeks, streaking her dirty face.

  “Sssshhh!” Talley knelt in front of her and took both her hands in one gnarled and calloused hand, stroking her blond hair with his other hand. “Miss Lyndzee, we gots to keep you safe. Ole Talley, they think he took you, so we gots to be real careful about how we take you back home.”

  “But you didn’t! You saved me!” Lyndzee wailed. “My mommy would understand if I told her what you did! My daddy would too!” She pulled her hand free and wiped the palm of her hand across her dripping nose, then across her jeans.

  Talley smiled sadly. “It ain’t that easy, girlie.”

  “Why, Talley, why? I’d tell them you helped me, that you gave me food and told me to stay in your camp, but I didn’t and when I left, Roy caught me. You saved me from Roy and from Tina!”

  Rather than answer, Talley scanned the stall’s dark ceiling. Lyndzee followed his gaze, taking in the spider webs that hung in dusty lace from the beams.

  Talley sighed again and patted Lyndzee on the head. “You don’t know much about me, Miss Lyndzee,” he said.

  “I know you’re a good person and Mommy says that even if somebody isn’t a Christian, if they’re a good person, they’ve got a little bit of Jesus in their heart. You’re my friend Talley, and you’re a good person.”

  Talley smiled sadly. “Ole Talley, he’s got his own problems. I don’t think your mommy and daddy would think much of them.”

  “They wouldn’t be like that! They’d fix them for you, I know they would!’

  Talley pulled a piece of newspaper from his pocket and began to read: “A recent fire at the home of Walter Kernenberger was caused by the intentional ignition of cooking fuel, investigators said today.


  “Kernenberger said he often let vagrants sleep in the barn in exchange for chores. Jubilant Falls Fire Chief Hiram Warder said that three cans of the cooking fuel Sterno were found in the barn after the blaze was extinguished last Sunday night.

  “Kernenberger said he allowed a man named Talley Lundgren, address at large, to stay in the barn that night. Police would like to speak with Lundgren about the fire, but they have not been able to locate him.”

  Talley shoved the paper back into his jacket pocket. “There’s more about how farmers around here will let folks like me stay in their barns, and how police are warning them not to do it no more. See, Miss Lyndzee? That’s why ole Talley’s got more problems than your Ma and Pa can fix.”

  “Did you start that fire?” She looked at Talley with wide eyes.

  He hung his head. “Yes. I didn’t mean to.”

  “It was an accident! You can’t help that!” Lyndzee grabbed his sleeve. “Please, Talley, let’s go to my house and I know my mommy and daddy will talk to the police for you.”

  “Not yet, Missy, not yet. It’s not safe for you and it’s not safe for me.”

  Lyndzee sighed and leaned against a bale of hay. She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them close.

  “I want it to be soon, Talley. I just want it to be soon.”

  Chapter 35

  “Mom, I can’t sleep.”

  Addison rolled over and rubbed her eyes. It only seemed minutes ago that she’d fallen, exhausted, into bed. Gary McGinnis swore her to silence while the search for Wiseman and Andersen was still on, but she’d at least called Jaylynn with the news.

  Jaylynn knew about the two women disappearing—Gary had called her down to the police station to inform her. She had not informed her husband, at McGinnis’s request, in case one of them attempted to get in touch with him.

  “Are you still planning on leaving town?” Addison asked.

  “I’ve quit packing for now,” Jaylynn answered softly.

  “Stay strong, Jaylynn. Something’s got to happen soon.”