Still, a little caution would do Miss Hothead good. “No alleys—you won’t find any of the alleys around here long enough or dark enough for mischief like that. He just…er, is pretty well connected. He’s hardwired into the political scene, not just local and state, but federal, too, and he, well, let’s just say he uses it to his advantage.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
A moment of silence stretched between them. Just as Ryan was about to push up from his rocker and beg off to head for the fields, Becca stopped him cold with her next words.
“I take it that the waitress at the diner knew your hired hand pretty well. J. T. Griggs, wasn’t it? She’s worried about him. From the way you mentioned that he left, I assumed he’d headed for another farming operation here. But he’s…what? Disappeared in the night after your grandfather’s funeral? Just dropped off the radar?”
Ryan’s stomach knotted. He knew Charlotte and Becca talking to each other spelled trouble.
“I didn’t really know J.T. all that well. He was a drifter of sorts, bounced all over the place. He was never one to settle down. I think maybe Charlotte read more into the relationship than J.T. might have intended.”
“So his disappearance isn’t tied up in all this?”
The screen door pushed open and Mee-Maw came out brandishing a broom. “Lawk’s a-mercy,” she said, scrutinizing the Cokes and the peanuts. “I sure hope that’s not your breakfast, Becca. Back in my day, we didn’t have junk food before noon. Of course, you young people live off that high-octane fancy coffee, so maybe a soft drink in the morning ain’t so bad, considering.”
“I had breakfast, thank you,” Becca said. “I got a bite to eat at the diner this morning.”
Mee-Maw made a derisive noise in the back of her throat. “They can’t keep good help at that diner. Why, last I heard, they had somebody there who didn’t even know which end of a can of pork ’n’ beans to open. I expect you’ll be staying for dinner, as late in the day as it is?”
Becca glanced at her watch, frowning. “It’s just ten. I thought I’d—”
“I get my dinner started ’bout half past ten. That way, the kitchen don’t heat up. Besides, usually Ryan’s been out in the fields for a long spell by then and he’s ready for a break.”
Ryan wondered at Mee-Maw’s intentions. Had she been eavesdropping? He knew well enough the broom was just a ruse because Mee-Maw swept that porch every day right after she put on the morning coffee.
But if she’d been trying to save him from some hole he was about to step in, why invite Becca to lunch?
The questions gnawed at him, started afresh his worries about the extent of Gramps’s involvement with Murphy.
“My grandmother did that, too, at least in the summer,” Becca was saying. “I’ve just lived too long in the city, that’s all.”
Becca’s words stirred a memory of another city girl he knew—Sunny. She’d be somebody to bounce this whole mess off of. Ryan could count on her to give him good common-sense advice on a whole host of topics.
But could he bear to risk losing the friendship he had with her by confessing the workings of this scam? He had not mentioned a whisper of any of Murphy’s scheme because he didn’t want her thinking he was…well, a criminal.
Considering how telling e-mail could be, was it a good idea to spill his guts online? If the government decided Ag-Sure’s investigation had merit, they’d follow suit and open up a federal investigation. In recent years, what with the budget being as tight as it was, they’d taken to making an example out of cases like this. That’s what, he figured, had created Becca’s firm’s bread and butter.
“You young people just about through here? I don’t want you spoiling your appetites with all that junk food.” Mee-Maw gave the two of them a fierce look she’d most likely perfected when Ryan’s dad was a kid.
“Mee-Maw, are you telling me in your not-so-subtle way that I should be off my backside and on a tractor?”
“Well, now—” she began a brisk attack on nonexistent cobwebs in the far corner of the porch “—I wouldn’t want to interrupt your visiting and all, and I know Miss Becca’s got official business to do, but now that you mention it, that tractor ain’t gonna run itself.”
Mee-Maw was trying to give him an out, after all. “Okay, okay, you win. Gramps always did say you were a champion nagger.”
“A woman like me has made many a good man better than he ought to have been,” Mee-Maw observed with a wink. “If you menfolk didn’t drag around so, eatin’ peanuts and drinkin’ colas all morning long, we wouldn’t have to nag, now, would we?”
Ryan made a show of giving Becca a “what can I do?” shrug and rose to his feet. Becca did the same.
“Mee-Maw, what time will you have dinner on the table? I can go over to Richard Murphy’s and talk with him this morning if I have time before lunch. I have to admit, I’d love to avail myself of more of your cooking,” Becca confessed.
Mee-Maw made a face at the mention of Murphy. “Better you talking to that man than me. I don’t hate him, mind you, but that don’t mean I have to like his ways. He’s hard on his help. He’s greedy, too. Plus, he’s lazy. One thing I can’t abide is a lazy farmer.” She finished sweeping the steps. “I’ll have dinner done about half past eleven. That’s plenty of time for you to get your fill of Richard Murphy.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
FROM THE COPPER-TRIMMED SIGN with its professional graphics to the brand-spanking-new metal barns, Richard Murphy’s operation reeked of money. Becca pointed her Mini Cooper through pastureland and fields of cotton, noting the young pines that served as a backdrop.
The paved drive, a far cry from Ryan’s rutted dirt road, led up to one of the barns, which had a brick-faced office attached. Becca parked the car and took a moment to flip through the dossier Ag-Sure had provided.
Ten claims in the past eleven years. They’d started small—Becca wasn’t sure if that was a sign they had been legitimate or whether he was testing the system. Regardless, Murphy had been after a bigger piece of the pie in the past couple of years. This time, he was claiming that his entire cotton crop was a disaster—to the tune of eight hundred thousand dollars. And his entire farming operation was leveraged out the wazoo.
She sighed and closed the file folder. This morning’s meeting made the sudden appearance of the vine in Georgia seem to be the product of a well-oiled conspiracy. Had the farmers taken advantage of a natural event and made it worse? Or had they dreamed it all up and actually imported the vine?
And what about J. T. Griggs, the farmhand who’d disappeared? Charlotte, the waitress at the diner, had told her that the man had been an ex-con from Texas. Before his sudden departure, he’d convinced Charlotte he was intent on going straight for her.
J.T. had hailed from an area of Texas plagued by the vine, again according to Charlotte. Was it just a weird twist of fate? Becca didn’t believe in coincidences.
She found herself hoping that Ryan wasn’t a part of it.
But he’d been there. He’d obeyed Murphy’s summons. So what did that mean?
Rooster is not that kind of person. I’d know it.
Becca retrieved her camera bag and her reporter’s notebook. Might as well get this over and done with. No point in dragging it out. Besides—and this thought cheered her—the sooner she was done, the sooner she could head back to Ryan’s.
Inside the office, a fluffy-haired girl in her very early twenties regarded Becca for a long moment. The girl punctuated her scrutiny with a few pops of bubble gum. “Mr. Murphy is on the phone,” she said finally. “Long distance. I’ll just tell him you’re here. I don’t have you on his appointment calendar.”
Becca managed to swallow her laughter at a farmer who required appointments. Good thing she’d asked one of the hired
hands about his boss’s whereabouts when she’d come earlier this morning—left to this bubble-gum bubble brain, Becca would have gotten no information.
While the girl nipped down a hallway, Becca helped herself to one of the pristine white brocade chairs in the reception area. Obviously, the hired help knew better than to soil the cushions.
The moment stretched into two, then three. Interrupting that all-important long-distance phone call must take time, Becca decided. Then the girl returned, gave her an inscrutable smile and took her seat behind the desk.
“He knows.” That was all the receptionist said. She turned back to her computer without enlightening Becca as to whether she would get an audience.
Ten minutes later, Murphy bustled down the hall. “Miss Reynolds! I do apologize. You must wonder where my manners are, keeping you waiting. Come on back, come on back.”
Becca preceded him, coming to stand just inside what was apparently his office. No beat-up metal desks or rough-and-ready furnishings greeted her. This office was done in Early Banker or Newly Arrived Big Shot, complete with the requisite prints of fox hunts on the walls. The only thing that spoke of who Murphy might really be was a huge mounted moose head with an impressive rack. It stared down at Becca from its place of honor just behind Murphy’s desk.
“Nice moose,” she offered.
He beamed. “Bagged that one in Canada a couple of years ago. Don’t suppose you’re a hunter? Well, even so, you should come up to the house sometime, see my trophy room—I have a collection from all over the world. The only reason the moose is in here is that I ran out of room in the trophy room, and Eileen wouldn’t let me put it anywhere else in the house.”
A farmer who could take extended vacations out of the country? Amazing. That was a luxury most farmers didn’t have, which was why Ryan had sought the online community; it was hard to have much of a social life when you were tied to a farm seven days a week. YooHoo was supposed to be for farmers and their families only, but Becca had found she had more in common with the people she “met” on it than in other online communities.
So she’d fibbed a bit. She was the granddaughter of a farmer, and she worked with agriculture. The other members—including Ryan—wouldn’t have welcomed her if she’d admitted she was a private investigator who hired out to crop-insurance firms.
Murphy made a show of stacking up the few papers on his desk and setting them to one side. “There. Now I can give you my full attention. I am anxious to get this done and over with so that Ag-Sure can finalize the claim. All of the farmers in this area who’ve been hit with the vine are just as eager to help as I am. To tell the truth, Miss Reynolds, we’re getting pretty desperate.”
Desperate? This office didn’t shout desperation. It shouted pretension, certainly. Desperation? No.
She flipped open the reporter’s notebook. “Well, then, let’s dive in, shall we. I have inspected Ryan MacIntosh’s fields, and the vine does look fairly pervasive.”
Murphy made a clucking sound of regret. “Poor boy. His first year running his grandfather’s farm has turned into a nightmare—I’ll be surprised if he can hold out. You’re right about the vine—he’s got about the worst case of it. It showed up first there, you know.”
A sick feeling pooled in her gut. “No. I wasn’t aware of that. Of course, I’ve not finished speaking with him.”
The farmer’s face registered fake guilt. “Oh, dear. I just assumed…”
When he broke off, Becca didn’t push it. “Tell me about your infestation.”
“I believe ours spread from Ryan’s front field. Our parcels of land border each other. One of the hands found it at first by sheer accident. The vine is tough and stringy, and when it wraps around the plows, it has to be removed by hand. I didn’t even know Ryan was having any problems until I mentioned this strange weed to him—he’s got the background, you know. Worked all over the country researching noxious weeds. I’d called in our county agent, and the whole mess just left him scratching his head. He’d not seen anything like it.”
Hmm. A lot of information for Murphy to volunteer in one gulp—especially about Ryan. Her gut told her Murphy was too eager to paint Ryan as the one with the means and the opportunity.
Or is that your infernally optimistic heart?
Becca covered up her inner debate by giving a slight nod. That was all the encouragement Murphy seemed to require.
“It’s bad stuff. The plowing, well, we can get by without. Lot of us had gone to the no-till method—” He paused to be sure she understood what he meant and continued after seeing her nod again. “So that’s not too bad. The harvesting’s the thing that’s going to be tough. My foreman assures me there’s no way, even after we defoliate, that we can run the harvester through the portions affected by that vine.”
She asked a few more questions before jumping to the big one: “Mind if I see how it’s affecting your crop?”
“Not at all, not at all. Just let me get my keys and we’ll drive around.”
Soon after, she was ensconced in Murphy’s extended-cab pickup, the hot leather seats biting through her cotton shirt and her jeans.
When she remarked on the heat, he nodded enthusiastically.
“I tell you, we can’t catch a break. It’s so dry that the governor’s about to declare these counties a disaster anyway—I talked with the ag commissioner earlier this week. Irrigation is killing us. ’Bout the only thing that’ll grow is that vine. Wish we could come up with some sort of commercial use for it.”
“Actually, in Asia it’s grown for medicinal purposes. So who knows? Maybe it’ll turn into a big bumper crop for you.” Becca shot a sideways glance at him and was rewarded by a downward turn of his mouth.
She let that go, adding, “So, will you apply for disaster relief based on the drought conditions?”
“Of course. Why not?”
“Well, honestly, I’m not seeing heat stress on the cotton that we’ve passed.”
Murphy’s frown deepened. “You would if you were around to see the stunted size of the bolls when they form. Plus, the dry weather makes the plants more vulnerable to insects.”
Something about his stubbornness, coupled with his earlier urbaneness and the slick pretentiousness of his office, aggravated her. At least, that’s what she told herself later when she said what she did. “You should know. You’ve certainly submitted enough claims over the years.”
If she’d sought to rile him, she didn’t get much for her effort. His frown pulled down an eighth of an inch more and his fat, sausagelike fingers gripped the steering wheel.
“Sounds like you came down here with your mind made up about me, Miss Reynolds. I’m just an ordinary farmer with a real bad run of luck—or maybe not luck. Some people say that farming is so bad these days, you come out ahead if you don’t try to plant anything.
“We’ll have to walk from here. The vines you’ll want to see—the ones closest to the MacIntosh spread—are right up ahead.”
* * *
BECCA GOT FINISHED with Murphy by eleven-thirty, then raced her way back to Ryan’s for the promised lunch. On her way, she reported in to her father about the mysterious J. T. Griggs.
“I’ll start doing a search for him. See if you can’t get me a full name and a social-security number,” her dad told her. He tagged on, “Good work, Becca.”
The unexpected praise warmed her. When she got to the MacIntosh farm, however, her good mood soured. Though Mee-Maw had waited on her, Ryan had not.
“He just grabbed a bite and headed back to the field. Said he’d lost too much time this morning. I expect he has. We got an ailing cow he needs to run over to the vet’s office later this afternoon, so he needs to get as much done as he can. I tell you, a farmer can stay busier ’n a one-legged man in a butt-kickin’ contest.”
“Was it like this for your husband when he was alive?” Becca tucked into batter-fried pork chops, green beans and last night’s creamed potatoes that had been reheated—and of course, tomatoes.
“Yes, gracious. Well, not after J.T. came along, and we always did manage to keep at least one person working with us through the years. Back in the sixties, Mac had two or three full-time people helping out. That was when a person could make a living farming. Before those big corporations took over.”
The mention of J.T. gave Becca the opening she’d been hoping for. “Charlotte’s plenty worried about J.T.,” she said, couching the words in what she hoped was a confidential tone.
“That girl… She’s goodhearted. J.T. liked her well enough, but maybe she cottoned on to him more than he did to her, and he didn’t quite know how to let her down easy.”
“So he just left? On account of Charlotte?” Talk about commitment phobia, if that’s the case.
“Some men are like that. Don’t you agree? I mean, after all, you’re—I don’t mean to insult you—but by the time I was your age, I was married with a baby and another on the way.” Mee-Maw pushed up her last bite of green beans with a corner of crisp corn bread. “And I married late ’cause of the war.”
Becca squirmed now that the hot light of interrogation was shining on her. “I, uh, just haven’t found the right guy.”
Mee-Maw grinned. “There’s plenty of Mr. Rights around here. You stay down here and you’ll find a fellow who knows how to treat a lady.”
Becca couldn’t help but think of Ryan. In their months of corresponding, she’d found him to be kind and considerate, ready to listen when she needed to vent. Ryan, in all honesty, was exactly the kind of Mr. Right she wanted.
If he doesn’t end up in a federal prison, that is.
“I’m curious. What did J.T.’s initials stand for?” Becca asked as she forced her mind back on her job.
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