A Dime a Dozen

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Wow, that brings back memories,” I said, gesturing toward an old bottle opener mounted on the side. “Do they even make those kinds of bottle caps anymore? The ones that have to be popped off?”

  “I don’t think so,” he replied. He hoisted himself up onto the cooler and slid into a sitting position, his back against the wall. “Join me,” he added, so I turned around and did the same, ending up next to him on top of the cooler, looking back out at the driveway and the house. “I’ve had a tough day,” he said. “It’s nice to take a break and relax for a minute.”

  “Working late again?” I asked.

  He took a long sip of his soda.

  “I guess tonight I just didn’t feel like going home.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Here at the orchard,” he said. “I’ve got an apartment up over the main garage.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “Yep. It’s mine for now, anyway.”

  We were companionably quiet, though my mind was full of questions. I wanted so much to ask him about Enrique and that last day, yet I wasn’t quite sure how to approach the subject.

  And actually, as I tried to think things through, I realized that just sitting there on the porch was kind of pleasant. The evening was cool but not cold, and fireflies lit the gathering darkness like tiny twinkling night-lights. There was a scent to the mountains I had always loved, an earthy, loamy smell that seemed to seep out of the ground and hover in the air every night at dusk. I rested my head against the rough wooden wall behind me and inhaled deeply, looking up at the black sky, trying to make out the silhouettes of the mountains against the backdrop of stars.

  “You know,” Pete said from his perch beside me, “before we found Enrique’s body yesterday, my biggest worry was who you really were and why Karen sent you here. Now everything’s changed. Life’s too short. If she wants it, she can have it.”

  He took a long draw from his bottle, gulping the liquid down.

  “I’m sorry, Pete,” I said, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared out into the distance.

  “Yeah, well, you’d have to say that, now wouldn’t you? Don’t worry, Callie. I’m not going to make trouble. If Karen’s looking for a fight, she’s going to be disappointed. That’s what I told my lawyer this afternoon. Just let it go.”

  I let that sit between us for a minute, my mind racing. What did Karen want? Who did Pete think I was?

  “Look, I’m afraid you have the wrong impression of me,” I said. “I’m not sure what’s going on here—”

  “Yeah, right. I had my lawyer check you out, just to find out what you really were. A surveyor? An appraiser? Turns out you’re an attorney. Big surprise.”

  “You had your lawyer check me out? Why? I told you who I was yesterday. My late husband was Bryan Webber, son of Dean and Natalie Webber.”

  He hopped down off of the the cooler and strolled to a recycling bin filled almost to the top with empty bottles. He set his down on top of the pile and then looked at me, hands on his hips.

  “Why did you come here to the orchard? Why did you ask Danny to give you a tour?”

  “Because I’m interested in the migrants. I wanted to see what the migrants’ work is like, how an orchard functions.”

  “Hah!” he said loudly. “So what does she plan to do? Wait until he’s dead or start legal proceedings now?”

  I swallowed hard, trying to get a handle on the situation.

  “Pete, just tell me what you think is going on,” I said. “Obviously, somebody, somewhere, has gotten their lines crossed.”

  “Do we have to play games on top of everything else? The will, Callie! Lowell’s will! Karen’s been gone for all these years, and now she’s back, swooping in for the kill. Never mind that I’ve run this place single-handedly since he got sick. Never mind that I’ve been a good son to him since the day he took me in. Never mind—” his voice cracked, and I was surprised to realize that he was crying. “Never mind that I love him, and it breaks my heart that he’s dying. He’s the only father I ever knew, and he put me in the will because he loves me like I’m his own son. If she wants to fight me on it, then fine. Let her have it. Once he’s dead, maybe I don’t want to stick around here anyway.”

  He finished his speech and sat on the porch rail, his back to me. I felt strangely moved, and I had to fight the urge to go to him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “It took staring death in the face, I guess,” he continued softly. “Made me realize that there are things more important than owning a big house, owning some land. I’d rather spend what little time Lowell has left taking care of stuff around here and making him comfortable. The rest doesn’t really matter, in the end.”

  I slid down off of the cooler and set my bottle on the recycle pile. Then I joined Pete at the porch rail and looked out over the driveway, exhaling slowly.

  “Pete, if your lawyer had done a good job when he checked me out, he would’ve seen that my status as a lawyer has nothing to do with you. I work for a philanthropist. I investigate charities.”

  As clearly as I could, I explained to him I was an investigator for the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation, and we were hoping to make a substantial donation to MORE.

  “I came to Greenbriar to verify their qualifications,” I said. “Part of that includes getting a better understanding of the population they serve. That’s why I needed a tour of the orchard. It had nothing to do with you or Karen. If your lawyer were really thorough, he would’ve realized that I don’t even have a license to practice law in North Carolina.”

  He walked to the end of the porch and back, seeming to work things through in his mind.

  “Is that the truth?”

  “It is. I promise.”

  He went to the cooler and pulled out two more drinks, popped the tops on both, and handed one to me.

  “Whew,” he said, slipping up onto the cooler again. “I gotta have another one. Maybe Karen’s not plotting against me after all.”

  I joined him back on the cooler and asked about the whole situation. According to Pete, he was very suspicious of Karen’s motives in moving to town after ten years of being away, mainly because her return just happened to come several weeks after the changing of Lowell’s will where he made Pete his sole heir.

  “And don’t think I didn’t fight him on it,” he said. “She’s his daughter! No matter what’s happened between them, she deserves some inheritance. I told Lowell to split everything down the middle, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Now, with him trying to leave me everything, I’m afraid she’ll contest the will and then I’ll end up with nothing.”

  I suggested that perhaps she didn’t even know about the will, that perhaps she had simply come back home in order to mend fences and make peace with her father. But Pete said that if that were the case, then why had she made no attempts to see the man since she moved back?

  “Were you aware of Karen’s past connection to Enrique Morales?” I asked, trying to guide the conversation into the area of the murder.

  “What, that they were friends as children?” he asked.

  “Well, yeah, and the whole barn incident.”

  “Oh, that. Sure. Lowell told me about it years ago.”

  “Then let me ask you a question,” I said. “Do you think there’s any way Enrique and Karen might have been having a relationship in the present day?”

  He thought about that.

  “No,” he said finally, shaking his head. “Enrique was a real family man. He and Luisa were together all the time. Even if he’d wanted to have an affair, which I doubt, I can’t imagine how he might have squeezed it in.”

  “Couldn’t he have slipped away from the fields once in a while?”

  Pete chuckled.

  “Enrique had the highest picking quotas of any migrant worker we had. If he were taking time out for hanky-panky, then how’d he manage to pick so many ap
ples? No, there’s just no way.”

  I took a sip of my soda, feeling the carbonation tickle my throat.

  “Tell me about Enrique’s final day,” I said. “Weren’t you one of the last people to see him alive?”

  “Apparently.”

  “So what happened?”

  He sighed and settled a little more into the wall, his shoulder lightly brushing against mine.

  “I’ve been over this with the police about a hundred times today,” he said wearily. “The day Enrique disappeared, he and a couple of the others were picking stragglers. We had finished picking the last of the apples in the high block the day before, and I needed him to go up there and do some clean-up work. I pulled Enrique from the line and told him what I needed him to do.”

  “Is that the last you saw of him?”

  “No. Just before lunch, he asked if he could borrow the truck. He was real agitated. Said he’d left his lunch back at the dorms and Luisa had their car.”

  “Did you let him take the truck?”

  “Yeah. Fifteen minutes later, he returned with his lunch.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “He brought the keys into the office and tossed them on the desk. But we didn’t speak. He seemed lost in thought, and I was busy straightening out a distribution problem.”

  “What then?”

  “As far as I knew, he went back up to the high block to finish the job. The truck went around in the afternoon to gather the last of the apple bins. We put the bins straight into storage, never thinking there might be something funny about one of them. At quitting time, Luisa came and asked me where Enrique was. Turns out, no one had seen him since noon. She was concerned, but what could she do? When he still hadn’t shown up a few hours later, we organized a search. The next morning, the police came and searched again. But we never found him, and no one ever saw anything suspicious.”

  “What did you think happened to him?” I asked.

  Pete shook his head, holding his bottle with both hands.

  “I didn’t have any idea. I knew he loved Luisa and the kids, but the life of a migrant is a difficult thing. It has to get to them sometimes. I figured he skipped town. When that letter came a few weeks later, that confirmed it for me.”

  “I think the letter threw off a lot of people. The police included.”

  Pete nodded.

  “So what do you think happened?” I asked softly. “Who killed him?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “He was a nice guy, a hard worker. My best guess is that something happened by accident, and then someone tried to cover it up by hiding the body. People can do some mighty stupid things when their backs are against the wall.”

  I took a sip of my drink, thinking about the autopsy report and the missing lungs. It wasn’t likely that Enrique’s drowning in a caustic fluid had happened by accident.

  Pete hoisted himself off the cooler and paced a bit in front of me.

  “The thing that gets me,” he said, “is why did I assume the worst about him? This hardworking, God-fearing family man, why was I so ready to believe that he would desert his wife and children? Do you know how many times in the last four months I’ve walked past that storage room door? Maybe a hundred. And it never occurred to me, not once, that his dead body was right there on the other side all along.”

  “You feel bad for doubting him,” I affirmed.

  “Yeah, I do. I feel bad for thinking the worst of a good man.”

  I finished my drink and climbed down from the cooler as well.

  “You seem to do that a lot,” I said. “Suspect the worst in folks. Me, Karen, Enrique. I’m surprised you haven’t already tracked down the killer.”

  “Don’t think I’m not looking at every single employee I’ve got, wondering, ‘Could it be him? Could it be her?’”

  I smiled.

  “And?”

  “And, so far, nothing.”

  “What about Danny?” I asked.

  “What about him?”

  “He seems an odd fit for an orchard. Maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye.”

  “Danny’s a good kid with a sad story,” Pete said. “If you heard it, you’d understand why he is the way he is.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Plus, remember,” Pete added, “he wasn’t here back then. He never knew Enrique.”

  “What about Snake Atkins?”

  “Snake? As the killer? That sweet kid wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

  “It was just a thought.”

  “No. No way. That’s really grasping at straws.”

  “Ah, well,” I said, taking my bottle to the recycle bucket. “It never hurts to explore every possibility.”

  I brushed my hands together before reaching into my pocket for my car keys.

  “But on that note,” I said, “I think I need to get going.”

  Pete nodded, taking a step back so that I could pass by.

  “Well, speaking of exploring possibilities,” he said, looking just a tad shy, “what would you think if I happened to ask you out on a date?”

  My eyes widened.

  “A date with the Fonz?” I cried, unable to help myself. “My inner preteen thanks you for this moment more than you could ever know!”

  “That sounds like a thanks but.”

  “A thanks but?”

  “Yeah, as in ‘Thanks, but…’”

  “Ah,” I said, smiling at him, thinking he was even more handsome now than he had been at 19. “Thanks, but I’m involved with someone. I’m sorry. But I’m very flattered that you asked.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, leaning back against the porch rail and flashing me his million-dollar smile. “The best ones are always taken.”

  Thirty-Four

  It was raining by the time I got to my car, a mist just heavy enough to require the use of the windshield wipers. Just to be safe, I popped the hood and looked inside, but there were no stink bombs or anything else unusual wired up inside. I closed the hood and got into the car.

  “A date with P.J. the soda jerk,” I said out loud to myself, grinning, as I drove away. A part of me wished I could call up my whole gang from way back when and let them know that he was still a hunk, he was still single, and he had actually asked me out. They’d all be green with envy, I felt sure.

  Deep in thought about all that had transpired this evening, I drove up the mountain past rows and rows of apple trees, my car lights casting odd shadows in the tangles of leaves and branches. Just before the last rows of trees, I could see the parking lot for Su Casa, and then I drove up over the highest point on the mountain and started back down the other side. I was nearly to my house when I saw something along the side of the road to my left, and I instinctively braked, afraid it was a deer. What I saw, instead, left me startled and confused. I drove on, my mind racing, wondering what on earth Zeb Hooper was doing at this hour walking up the mountain in the dark! I wouldn’t have known it was him if not for the walking stick. The rain jacket he wore had a hood that obscured his face and shock of white hair.

  I thought back to the other time I had seen him walking. He had been headed down the mountain yesterday morning. Now he was walking up, at night? I pulled into my driveway, parked the car next to Harriet’s, and quickly got out. I thought if I went fast enough, I might be able to follow him.

  Ignoring the drizzle, I ran out to the road and up the hill. I couldn’t see Zeb up ahead, so I ran faster. Finally, as I reached the crest, I came to a stop, knowing it was no use. Bending over, gasping for breath, I thought that somehow the man had simply disappeared.

  Disheartened, I walked back down the mountain, across my drive, and up the steps. As I swung open the front door, I was met with wonderful smells of tomato and oregano and garlic. Harriet stood at the stove, wearing an apron, stirring a big pot of spaghetti sauce.

  “You’re all wet!” she cried. “You didn’t have another stink bomb, did you?”

  “No,” I said, “just a wild goose chase.�
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  Harriet had already set the table, so I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and went on into the bedroom to change into dry clothes. Once I was dressed, I came back and took my place at the table. My mind was swirling with all of the events of the day, my brain simply overwhelmed.

  What was Zeb doing going up the mountain in the rain, in the dark?

  “This is so nice, Harriet,” I said. “Do you know how long it’s been since someone cooked for me?”

  “Well, I’m no Betty Crocker,” she replied. “But I do make a mean spaghetti sauce.”

  She said grace and then we ate, and I was glad to find that she was correct; despite her usual fare the spaghetti sauce was delicious.

  “So what have you been out doing since you left the office?” Harriet asked. “Or do I really not want to know?”

  “Nothing too shocking,” I said, smiling. I told her about my talk with Lowell Tinsdale and then my conversation with Pete. Finally, I mentioned the strange comings and goings of Zeb Hooper up and down the mountain.

  “Can you imagine what that’s about?” I asked.

  “Maybe he’s a health nut and goes for a walk twice a day.”

  “Up a winding mountain road in the dark? I don’t think so.”

  Harriet retrieved the telephone book and flipped through it until she found a listing for Zebulon Hooper.

  “Okay, here he is,” she said. “What’s your address here?”

  “Twenty-nine Mountain View Road.”

  “He lives at twenty-five. I guess that’s below here? I’d be willing to bet he’s got himself a lady friend. If he lives just below here and she lives above here, then what you’re seeing is old Mr. Zeb taking himself a walk up to spend the night.”

  “That may be it,” I said. “But you know as well as I do that the man’s up to something.”

  “You mean the money laundering.”

  “Yes. He’s got cash coming in from somewhere he needs to wash. We’ve just got to figure out what he’s doing to generate that cash.”