Laura Hopper was pointing this out to me as we walked through the main house at Clayton. “If you need to use your cell phone, you might have some trouble,” she was saying. “Mostly we get service out here, but there are places where it’s spotty. If you have trouble, just walk ten feet to your left or right, okay?”
“Okay.” I nodded.
“If it’s real bad, you can always use our land line.” She smiled at me. “We may seem a bit primitive to you, but that’s what we’re all about. Our mission here is conservation. We practice simplicity and being close to the land. We want to preserve as much of the land as possible, to show people how to live sustainably in harmony with nature. That’s the tenets that Clayton Society is founded on.”
I nodded. The main house was a mansion from the 1700s. It was sprawling and enormous, and the part that we were walking through now was ornate and decorative. It didn’t look the least bit simple or sustainable. I peered up at the sculptures that sat on shelves as we strolled through the room. “Yeah, this is exactly what I have in mind when I think about conservation.”
“Oh.” Laura actually blushed. “No, I realize that this place is quite fancy. But we just maintain this because of the historical accuracy and all that. Sometimes, we have events here, and we rent the place out for needed funds. We’d love not to need that extra financial push, but things are still imperfect. Society is strong, and we must fulfill certain obligations.” She smiled.
“So, this stuff goes completely against your beliefs—”
“Not completely.” She shook her head. “No, I can understand how it might appear hypocritical, but it’s really not at all. We are spreading the word of unity and of community and of the connection to the natural world. And whatever we do that helps us to be able to spread that word is ultimately done in service of the good. So, it’s not hypocrisy at all.”
“I see,” I said. “The end justifies the means.”
Her smile wavered. “Honestly, Ms. Stern, we are paying you. The least you could do is be a little bit polite.”
Ooh. I’d struck a nerve.
“Now, now, Laura,” said a voice.
I turned to see Gunner entering the other side of the room. He looked better now that he wasn’t in prison orange. His beard was trimmed again, his hair combed. He was wearing a homespun sweater and a pair of jeans. He looked soft and cuddly, like a teddy bear. He was smiling his dazzling smile again.
“Don’t pick on Ivy,” he said. Turning to me, “I can call you Ivy, can’t I?”
“I suppose,” I said.
“She’s doing her job,” said Gunner. “She’s investigating, and she can’t make any assumptions or blindly trust anything. She has to stay sharp. You should appreciate that about her if you can.”
Laura nodded. “Of course.” She turned to me, giving me an apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry. I think it’s simply the stress of everything lately. You know, we just got Gunner’s bail paid. He’s barely been home for a day, and I told him that I wanted him to rest, but he said that he was happy to talk to you, so that’s why you’re here.”
I smiled back. Maybe my smile was a little more forced. “Well, thanks for making the time for me to try to figure out who killed the woman he’s been arrested for killing.”
She was oblivious to my tone. “Of course, we’re so grateful to you. Thank you for everything that you’ve done so far.”
Gunner sat down in a large, plush easy chair. “Should we get started?” He gestured for me to have a seat in an identical chair next to his.
I sat. “I’m ready if you are.”
“Laura, could you have someone bring us some of that delicious peppermint tea that they’ve been brewing up?”
Laura looked surprised. “Oh, I thought that perhaps I’d stay to listen—”
“I think it would be better if it were just the two of us,” I said.
“But—”
“I agree,” said Gunner.
Laura didn’t look happy about that, and she swept out of the room making a sour face.
“What’s your relationship to Laura?” I said.
Gunner laughed. “Did you come here to talk to me about Laura?”
“Are you sleeping with her?” I said. “How many women are you sleeping with?”
He arched an eyebrow. “I thought people judged you, and you understood all about that.”
“Oh, I understand being judged,” I said. “And I’m not, incidentally, judging you. I don’t see anything wrong with having multiple sexual partners or with not being committed to the partners you do have. You know, as long as it’s reciprocal. If they’re allowed as many partners as you have.”
He shook his head, chuckling. “You’ve got the wrong idea. This isn’t some kind of polygamous compound. I don’t have wives. And I’m not the leader here. I run the nonprofit organization. That’s all. I’m not what they’ve been saying I am on the news. And I don’t have a bunch of women running around at my beck and call. What we have here is love. It grows like a beautiful flower when tended, and here on the farm, it blossoms everywhere.”
Sure. Okay. “So, you are sleeping with Laura?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because if you weren’t, you’d just deny it.”
“I’m not sleeping with her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Is this really what you came to ask me about?”
“It’s part of it. I do want to understand how things work around here. I can only understand so much from talking to you, after all.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” he said, “why don’t you spend some time here on the farm, talking to some of the people who live here. They’d be able to give you a better picture of the experience of Clayton Farm than I could.”
“Oh, I plan on that,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want your answers about day-to-day life here.”
“Or about my sex life.”
I sighed. “Fine. We’ll move on from that. Let’s talk about the night of the murder.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Can you prove that? Do you have an alibi?”
“I do,” he said. “I spent the evening with Jagger. We built a fire. We played guitar.”
“Jagger?”
“Jagger Hinton. He lives on the farm here. I told the police about him, but they don’t consider him a credible witness, since they think that everyone on the farm is under my thumb. The lawyer says that we can put Jagger on the stand, but that the prosecution will likely shred him, considering he grew up here at Clayton and will appear obviously biased.”
I nodded slowly. “That may be so. But if you were really with him—”
“I’m not lying about it,” he said. “You think I’m lying as well. You know, the last time we met, I thought we’d really made progress. I felt as if some trust was forming between us. But now it seems as if you’ve convicted me in your mind, just the same as the rest of them.”
“I haven’t convicted you of anything,” I said. “I’ll talk to Jagger. And if there’s any way we can prove that you were with him, that would be very helpful.”
He hung his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blown up at you. It’s only that you have no idea how frustrating this is. Being an innocent person, but being suspected of being guilty. It’s impossible to know how to act. I want to appear not guilty, but it seems as if all my natural inclinations make me appear as if I’m faking it. If I protest my innocence, I sound like a whining liar. I don’t know what to say or what to do.”
I thought about what he was saying. It was true, as far as that went. If I’d been arrested for a crime I didn’t commit, I imagined being outraged, proclaiming my innocence loudly and with confidence. And I could see how that didn’t necessarily make me look any more innocent than a guilty person. How did innocent people behave, anyway? I furrowed my brow, giving him a long look. I wished I could look into his eyes and see the truth of the incident there.
But I couldn’t do that. My job was to get to the truth. That was going to take hard work.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m still on the case. I’m still looking. What do you think about the other members of the group? Quinton, Kellen, Farrah, and Odette? Did you see any of them that night?”
“No, I was with Jagger.” He rubbed his forehead. “But I don’t think they did it. I can’t imagine any of them doing something quite so violent.”
“They claim they were setting free Tess’s soul. Do you know anything about that?”
He shook his head slowly. “No, not at all.”
“You don’t routinely practice human sacrifice on the farm.”
“No.” He clenched the arms of his chair.
I held up a hand. “It’s all right. I have to ask.”
“No, you don’t.” He looked disgusted. “You don’t even have to give that thought any credence. You asked it to see how I’d react. Did I pass your test? Did I seem appropriately disturbed at the thought of human sacrifice?”
“Gunner—”
“Because I am disturbed, you know. I’m appalled. I don’t hold with that kind of thinking, and I never encouraged any of the people on this farm to pursue something so sordid. In a way, though, it only proves my point. I’m not in control of these people, even though everyone thinks I am. They do what they want.”
“Well, but if you were in control of them, then having them there, claiming to have committed murder, while you denied knowledge of their actions, well, that would make it seem as if you weren’t controlling them. When, in fact, you were.”
“That’s very convoluted, isn’t it?”
“Not that convoluted.”
“Please, Ivy. That’s convoluted. Anyway, I don’t think that’s the way it happened. I don’t think that they committed any kind of murder. I think they’ve confessed to the murder to try to save me. I don’t think the murder was committed by someone who lives on the farm. I think it was done by someone else to try to frame us. People in the outside world think that we’re nut jobs. And they knew that the public would believe the crazies at Clayton had done something so heinous. But what they don’t realize is that we’re a very gentle group of people. We would never do something like this.”
“Let’s go back to Quinton and the others for a moment, all right,” I said. “If you don’t think they’re guilty, then you believe that they’re lying about committing the murder?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What reason would they have to lie about that?”
“Well,” he said, “they’re doing it for me. They’re the ones who are making a sacrifice. They’re trying to save me by claiming to do something that they haven’t done.”
“They’re doing it for you?” I said.
“Yes, it’s misguided,” he said. “And it’s not working, because they haven’t dropped any charges against me, so they should just give it up. But I can’t stop them from doing it.”
“Why would they do that for you?”
He gave me a confused look. “To save me. I said this already. But I’ve tried to explain to them that I don’t need their interference. I’m going to beat this with the truth, not with their lies.”
“But why would they want to save you?” I said. “If they were convicted of this crime, they would never get out of prison. They could be sentenced to death. They are giving up their entire lives for you. Why?”
Gunner’s jaw worked. There was a long pause. “I suppose you’d have to ask them that.”
I leaned forward. “I need you to be honest with me if this is going to work.”
“I’m being honest.”
“Come on, Gunner. Let’s have no more of this business in which you’re not the ‘leader.’ People don’t volunteer to give up their lives for someone they consider an equal. You’re not just the head of the nonprofit organization. You are more than that. Admit it.”
He dragged a hand over his face, laughing a little. Then he got up out of his chair.
I leaned back in mine.
He wandered over to the mantle. It was covered in tiny porcelain horse figurines. He picked one of them up, turning it over in his hand. “It’s not anything official.”
“You are the leader. You run these people’s lives.”
“No.” He turned to me sharply. “I… I have ideas. I’ve always had them. I started telling people about them, and those people liked what I had to say, and they told other people, and…” He turned back to the mantle and set the figurine down. “My role is to express what we all feel, to be a reflection of all people’s souls. I don’t tell people what to do. I don’t force anyone to do anything. But people sometimes choose to listen to my ideas, to live the way I live. And I don’t stop them from doing that, okay?”
“Oh, certainly,” I said. “If you could own a mansion like this—”
“The Clayton Society owns—”
“And every single one of them has ‘chosen to listen to your ideas’ on basically everything, right?”
“It isn’t the way you’re making it sound.”
I shrugged.
“It isn’t.” He came back over his chair and sat down, gazing earnestly into my eyes. “If it were like that, I could order them to take it back. I could order them to at least accept the bail out. We tried to pay, to get the four of them out of jail, and they refused. They got this idea into their heads all on their own, and I can’t control them. I didn’t ask them to do it, and I can’t make them stop. I’m not some kind of two-bit dictator. I’m really not.”
I held his gaze, letting his eyes bore into my own. I found myself wanting to believe every word that was coming out of his mouth. He seemed in such distress, and a part of me wanted to soothe him, maybe to run my fingers through his long hair and whisper to him that everything would be all right.
That frightened me. I snapped my head down, breaking our stare. He was good at what he did. He was charismatic. But so far, anyway, I was staying on top of this situation. I was catching myself before I let him get to me too deeply.
Anyway, on some level, it didn’t matter whether he was a manipulative spiritual leader or not. It only mattered if he was a murderer.
That I wasn’t sure about. But there was a lot of exploring left to do.
“It’s okay,” Gunner said.
I looked up, raising my eyebrows questioningly.
“It’s like I said before,” he said. “You can’t make assumptions, and you can’t blindly trust me. I respect that, and I wouldn’t want you to lose your edge. So, if you have to keep me on your suspect list, that’s fine. As long as I’m not the only person there.”
“I’m just doing my job,” I said.
“Yes, I know.” He got out of his chair. “Laura never did bring us that peppermint tea. I wonder where she went off to. I’ll go and look for her.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I think I’d rather nose around the farm, talk to some people, like you suggested.”
* * *
I found Jagger Hinton out in the fields. He was working on planting something. I didn’t really know what, but he seemed happy enough to take a break and talk to me while resting his weight on his plow. He wiped sweat away from his brow. “Yeah, I was with Gunner that night. We were hanging out and playing guitar.”
“That’s what he said,” I noted.
“Well, because that’s what happened.” Jagger grinned at me. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen, a good-looking kid who was tan from working outside.
“You and Gunner hang out a lot?”
Jagger shrugged.
I was having difficulty picturing Gunner spending an evening with this kid. What would they really talk about? What did people who were so far apart in age have in common? On the other hand, maybe the unlikelihood of it was what made it seem more true. It wasn’t something that Gunner was likely to have made up.
“There a lot of people your age living here on the farm?”
I asked.
“A lot?” said Jagger. “Not a lot, not really, but there are some. We take in runaways, you know? Lots of times, there are kids out there that are strung out on drugs and living on the street, and we help them turn their lives around.”
This was the first I was hearing about that, but I guessed it made sense. “But you weren’t a runaway. Gunner says you grew up here?”
Jagger nodded. “That’s right. Born and raised.” He got a dimple in just one cheek when he smiled.
“Ever think about leaving?”
“Sure,” said Jagger. “I mean, sometimes, it’s easy to feel like we’ve got a raw deal out here. You see kids your age getting drunk and running wild, and you wonder what that would be like. Luckily, my mom’s never stopped me from getting a taste of that kind of thing. She said she wasn’t going to force me to live a clean lifestyle. You know, she wanted me to choose.”
“And you chose this lifestyle.”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s a good way to live. I like it here. The thing I don’t like about being in the outside world is how people are with each other. They’re so standoffish, you know. They don’t help each other out. On the farm, everyone’s got each other’s back.”
“I see.” I tapped my chin. “So, uh, if someone didn’t like it here, could they leave?”
He drew his eyebrows together. “What do you mean?”
“I just mean, can people leave?”
“Sure,” he said. “I mean, with the runaways that come here, once they get clean, we encourage them to go back to their parents, you know, as long as they aren’t coming from a dangerous situation that it wouldn’t be safe for them to go back to. Honestly, though, most people who come here don’t want to leave.”
Right. I smiled at him. “So, you were really with Gunner that night?”
“You think I’m lying?”
I shrugged.
“You know, Gunner’s been a big part of my life ever since I was a kid. He’s like that with all the kids, as much as he can be. He’s there for us. And when he can, he spends time one-on-one. That was what we were doing that night. Just the two of us hanging out.”
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