New Growth
By Jayne Menard
New Growth
By Jayne Menard
www.jaynemenard.com
Copyright 2016 © by Jayne Menard. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise – without the express prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
International Standard Book Number ISBN: 978-0-9975373-0-7
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, cases, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Also by Jayne Menard
The Spook Hills Trilogy, Book 1: Old Growth & Ivy
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
Part I: Searching
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part II: Becoming Mathew
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part III: Taking Charge
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Acknowledgements
My heartfelt appreciation to my niece, Cheryl, for her enthusiastic consulting on the art of fused glass, which helped me to develop the gentler side of one of the characters. Cheryl runs Wits Ends Designs, a glass studio in eastern Pennsylvania. Her work may be found at www.witsenddesigns.com.
My special gratitude to my three readers who encouraged me through this process and contributed many inputs and edits that improved the story -- Cindy Gelezinsky, Marilee Haase and Sandy Pfaff.
Author’s Note
New Growth is the second book of the Spook Hills Trilogy. While the story stands alone, the roots of its characters and plot are in the Old Growth & Ivy, the first novel in the trilogy. Over the course of the three books, the stories of FBI agent extraordinaire, Steve Nielsen and his three top agents are told as each one struggles to define a new life for himself away from the FBI. Although 60 years old, Steve meets the love of his life and continues to transform himself into a broader man. Steve’s story is in the first book of the trilogy.
Mathew Heylen, Steve’s friend, best agent and now business partner, also seeks to find his life-long love while founding a vineyard in the Oregon wine country, which they jokingly dubbed Spook Hills. This book, New Growth, is about Mathew and his desire to find someone to share his life. Even with his seductive laughing eyes, handsome Mathew finds his childhood fear of rejection stands in his way. Moreover old and new business with the FBI disrupts his life. Even so, he finds himself drawn to his neighbor’s niece who visits occasionally but is married and living in California.
Brian Tovey and Moll O’Leary are Steve’s other two lead agents. Like Mathew, they left the FBI after Steve retired. They founded a startup company to protect banks from illicit money laundering schemes. The third book of the trilogy, Noble Firs, will explore Brian’s and Moll’s efforts to define new lives for themselves, meet their individual expectations and keep up with the meteoric growth in demand for their company’s services. Even as they rise to these challenges, younger leaders in the underworld organize to strike back after Brian and Moll uncover several money laundering schemes leading to the arrests of several senior mobsters.
For now, curl up with your favorite tea, coffee, hot chocolate or a glass of wine and enjoy a good read with New Growth!
Part I: Searching
Chapter 1
Mathew Heylen strode up the hill seeking a vantage point to view his property. He smiled at the neat rows on his new vineyard in Dundee, Oregon. A breeze lifted his thick sandy hair, pushed it dust on his low-slung hiking boots with each step he took. He paused and inhaled deeply, enjoying the morning full of August’s sunny summer promise. Hiking uphill, he leaned on a long piece of English hickory, topped with a segment of antler. The staff helped reduce the stress on his left leg, shot twice almost two years before while he served with the FBI.
After reaching the top, he stopped and shrugged out of his rucksack, taking out a small picnic blanket, a thermos of coffee, a sketch pad, a ruler and several sharpened pencils. Nestled against a hill down below him, a small ramshackle farmstead cozied up to a scenic old barn. Ever since he first saw the property, the old buildings beckoned to him to design his home around them. Ideas came and went. Today he wanted to capture on paper the image that stuck with him.
His business partner and friend’s house was built into the bank on an adjacent knoll overlooking the rows of grapevines contoured to the undulations of the acreage. When they started this business venture after completing challenging careers with the Bureau, they jokingly called the enterprise ‘Spook Hills’ and the name stuck. The new house resembled his friend Steve. Even now at 62 he was solid, imposing and austere. The surrounding yard and landscaping reflected his new wife, Ivy. She filled their new home and gardens with warmth and the glow of subtle colors in the same way she enhanced her husband’s life.
They worked on the farmland sporadically the prior year while dodging bullets during their wrap-up of unfinished business for the Bureau. This year Mathew relished the hard work of planting the remaining fields with dormant roots that now grew green and healthy.
He stared at his house site, wanting to make progress on its design. The layout in his mind echoed a New England farmhouse erected higgledy-piggledy over time, connecting to the barn with a long enclosed breezeway. He envisioned an upright two story main structure with one wing, the existing house, located on the left side as he faced it. On the right, an expansive sunroom would connect the house to the garage.
Since the summer day quickly warmed up, he pulled off his light sweater, then he unscrewed the top from the thermos, poured a cup of coffee, and scanned the ground for a flat spot to set it down. He started drawing an outline of the house, liking the way it fit against the contour of the land. In his mind the ground sloping up behind the house should be planted with grass, inviting kids to roll down to the bottom with their giggles ringing out like church bells or in the rare snowstorm, careen down on a saucer sled. He sketched in a playhouse further up the slope – a place where adults needed an invitation to visit.
He sipped the Kona coffee and surveyed the farmland around him. My home! Finally, he was designing his prospective house. Last year the case against certain drug lords called the Fuentes brothers had curtailed his headway. Now he centered his attention on this next phase of his life, even though his search for a mate kept stumbling and stalling.
He continued sketching, adding details. The house would have a traditional facade. A cupola capped with a verdigris copper weathervane, perhaps crowned by a flying ghost should be fitted at the peak of the garage.
With the front of the house roughed in, he finished the coffee, stowed all except the pencils and the sketch book and got himself up. His damaged muscles stiffened while he sat and he did several stretches before walking to another knoll to assess the plot from a different angle. He halted midway up, turned and considered the aspect.
As he stood, his scalp prickled around his right ear and his right side tightened reflexively in response to a menacing presence. He whirled around in time to catch the crown of a head disappear behind a nearby hummock. Dropping his backpack, he grabbed his stick and gave chase.
“Stop!” he yelled running up the hill.
When he reached the crest, a man dressed in black sprinted in advance of him down to the road.
“Hey you, stop, come back here!” he yelled again.
The man pelted on without even looking back.
Mathew skittered downhill. Up ahead the man reached the road, turned left and ran up an incline. Relying on his thumbstick for balance, Mathew scrambled to the road barely in time to see the man disappear down the other side of the hill.
Mathew huffed up the road, cursing his slowness. Up ahead a car started, ground its tires in the gravel and let out a roar as it sped away. Mathew reached the crest of the hill and paused. The car disappeared in the distance. He walked down the slope and went down to examine where the car had been parked. With his agent’s eyes, he noted the tire tracks in the dirt and where the vehicle skidded away. After taking photos with his phone of one clear imprint of tire tread, he went over the area. No other clues surfaced.
He walked back to scan the compressed vegetation where the man lurked. On the verdant hillside right next to him lay a discarded cigarette butt. His trained eye and years of habit made him rummage in his rucksack for a plastic bag to pick it up. He zipped the baggie shut and regarded it with annoyance. The intruder threw it down carelessly in the neat field. At the beginning of his career as an agent, Mathew had made a study of tobacco products and memorized the brands around the world. Reopening the bag, he sniffed in a heady aroma of cloves and burnt tobacco. Unfiltered and likely Turkish, it might be Djarum. He put the bag in his pocket to be thrown away later.
Looking around, Mathew found another smoked butt and plunked it in the bag. He took out his iPhone and snapped photos. All their business for the FBI should have ended last year when two drug kingpins, the Fuentes brothers, were killed during an arrest operation at their hideaway home near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yet here someone spied on him. Who, why, and what threat did the man pose? The man’s physique was lean, not too tall. He wore his brown hair short under a black baseball cap. Judging by his agile sprint downhill, he maintained a good level of fitness seemingly at odds with his smoking.
With Ivy and Steve away touring Steve’s familial homeland of Norway, being on his own concerned Mathew. Even more worrisome, the young man working on the vineyard, Fred, returned from a short holiday the next morning. No way did he want him or his family in peril again, as they had been the year before. Even though he was not yet 21, Fred was his crew supervisor, and they enjoyed a lighter hearted working relationship than Mathew was accustomed to in his prior career.
A half hour later, Mathew sat in his room at Steve’s house debating with himself what the next steps should be. The two cigarette butts lay sealed in a zipped bag in front of him. He needed to talk to someone and yet he would not call Steve on vacation over such a small difficulty. Spook Hills was his to run. He still leaned on Steve, and probably always would, yet he needed to take command.
With his friends and former agents, Brian and Moll, centering their attention on their startup company, he searched for a number and dialed a retired agent named Lenny Bruckner, who had operated with them before.
“Lenny,” the man answered in his gruff voice, more brusque than tough, like an old handsaw bouncing across an oak log.
“Heylen here,” Mathew said. “Enjoying retirement?”
“Doing nothing all day will put me into an early grave. I’m surfing the web for something to do with my time.”
“Want to work with us at Spook Hills again? You’ll be in charge of security. If you want, you can work on the vineyard too.”
“What’s happening?”
After Mathew explained the situation, Lenny asked, “You still keep fire power?”
“Roscoes locked in the safe room along with submachine guns. Steve stuffed an old Uzi and rocket launcher in there with ammo and explosives.”
“Good man, Steve. Get your roscoe out. Lock up the house and stay put. Turn on the alarm system. Ivy’s corgi dogs with you?”
“Yeah. As watchful and noisy as ever. The cat is here too.”
“Good. Those corgis will sound an alarm if anyone appears. Too bad they can only bite as high as the ankle. I’ll fly up this afternoon and rent a car at the airport. Call you when I’m on my way. Let’s try it and see what develops. You might convert this city slicker into a farmer.”
Even for Mathew as an accomplished agent, protecting Spook Hills was a challenge by himself, making him relieved Lenny would soon be on-site. While he tended to be a little trigger-happy in a sting, he was skilled and focused, proficient from his years on FBI SWAT teams.
Up above the small village of Botaya, Spain, the man who knew himself to be Cruze Fuentes, took a last pull on his unfiltered Camel before stubbing it out and heading to the long shed where he had built a glass working shop. At first glance, Cruze looked like an average Spaniard, dark waved hair, parted neatly on one side, green-brown eyes, and slightly tanned skin. A pale scar in the shape of a check mark sat above his left eye. He appeared faded in his worn chambray shirt and well-washed jeans, but his eyes were sharp and intensely aware of every movement around him as he walked across the dry yard.
Once at the workshop, he rolled up two of the four double-wide rolling doors and peered with satisfaction inside. His work bench for cutting and designing, sheets of glass and other materials sat in an orderly arrangement in the first bay. The middle section housed the kiln and a long counter for finishing tasks. One day he hoped to install a glass blowing center with big ovens for molten glass in the third section, while he earmarked the fourth compartment for storing and displaying completed projects.
Working with glass soothed him. He slid open windows around the long studio allowing a breeze to flow through, making his experimental wind chimes jingle overhead. He devised them with small geometric bits adhering to each of the long, skinny rectangles. The carillons glistened in the blues, greens and grays of the sea and sometimes he added a bright aqua or deep azure.
Passing under the wind chimes, he reached up to caress the smoothed textures with his fingers. The glossy surface of the finished product brought to mind brocaded silk. He suspended the glass rectangles with a sturdy nickel wire from a triple fused rod of rosy pink and gold like a sunset. His favorite was fashioned from a cut-down version of a silver LED light string run by batteries. He hung the lighted chimes on his porch to watch them twinkle at dusk when he sat outside having his dinner in the twilight. Even though making chimes was a simple project from a fusing perspective, he was learning as he went along, using the Internet and his glass-working books as instructional guides.
He liked the glossy glide of glass under his fingers and the way light passed through it, moving at various angles and lighting up his studio in a variety of subtle shades. At times the cut edges twinkled around him, shooting sparks of light against his hands, the bench and the white stucco of the building. His goal of defining a style for a line of home merchandise might take him several years. Once he developed a better understanding of working with glass, he anticipated touring studios and taking classes here in Spain and in other countries. First he needed the skills to produce fused glass wares without ruining so many of them.
This life suited him, alone here in the mountains and away from the village where he bought groceries. The humble house nestled on a steep slope with its back to the north, permitting it to capture full d
ays of sunshine. Working shutters helped keep the house cooler when the sun shone too brightly. Miles away his boat rested in a slip, waiting for the next time he became restless or for when he might need to move swiftly, make his way over a low saddle in the Pyrenees and activate his next survival strategy. From here he could head down to the Mediterranean, or hide out in the mountains or make his way into France and over to Eastern Europe or even down into Turkey.
The ancient monastery bell started ringing for evening prayers higher up in the Pyrenees. The way sound traveled, the peals were clear and mellow yet not competing with the birdsong or with the tintineo of the small bells on the goats roaming the hillsides. The goats came down at night to drink water from the trough he refreshed daily. While unsure who owned the goats, he delighted in their company and he found supplying water and sometimes hay a fair trade.
Perhaps one day he would hike up to the monastery for vespers with the monks. Sometimes he walked down to Botaya on a Sunday to partake of mass at the church. Although he was a lapsed Catholic, he longed to find clemency. After his life in the drug world, he doubted any amount of atonement would cleanse his dirtied soul. Even so he might find shards of redemption. He had lived his life for his brothers until their continuing commitment to their illegal enterprises compelled him to seek a different path. For over a year and a half, he existed peaceably in exile from them. Even though loneliness sometimes tempted him to sign into an old email address or dial them on his cell phone, he hoped by staying away, they would sell their businesses sooner. He also feared they would try to ensnare him back into their illegal cartel if he contacted them.
He contemplated the row of glass panels resting in tall, narrow compartments of shelving. Today he wanted to make a small, shallow bowl where glass draped over a frame in the heat. The last one cracked when he precipitously opened the door before cool down was complete. His drawing for the bottom showed a narrow leaf depiction in matching glass. He took out a sheet of a watery aquamarine, positioned it with care on the worktable and opened a book to verify his technique and the measurements. He began scoring the glass to break it into the shapes he wanted. He looked down at his hands ruefully, now nicked and scarred where glass chips or sharp edges had sliced his skin. He soon learned to keep a stocked first aid kit nearby and to be meticulous about keeping his hands and nails clean.
New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) Page 1