Gordath Wood

by Patrice Sarath

  Seven

  Almost a week after Lynn’s and Kate’s disappearances, the headlines still screamed, “Hunt Country Fire!” and “Fire Marshals Investigate Arson.” A few die-hard reporters stood at the entrance to Hunter’s Chase, taped by the news trucks that broadcast “live from this horrified enclave of wealthy equestrians.” Fire response crews from New York and Connecticut mopped up the last smoldering hot spots and prayed for rain, and the search crews waited for the all clear before they could resume searching for the missing riders.

  Except for the dust, the farm was back to normal. The horses had been returned to their comfortable loose boxes, the owners had been appeased, and plans for Mrs. Hunt’s annual gala and horse show were still under way. Joe had a lot of work to do.

  As he came out from the main barn, he saw that he wasn’t going to get to any of it right away. A small group of police officers awaited him on Mrs. Hunt’s lawn. She stood with them, and they all looked at him as he walked over, his stomach knotting.

  They found them. Sweet Jesus, they found them. He almost turned tail and ran. He didn’t want to know.

  Instead, he kept on walking. When he came up to the group, Mrs. Hunt indicated one officer, a plainclothesman in a gray suit with salt-and-pepper hair, and said, “This is Lieutenant Spencer, Joe. He would like to ask you some questions. I’ve told him you have a great deal of work to do, and he agreed to question you while you get your chores done.”

  Joe waited a moment for his stomach to settle down. He could feel Spencer’s eyes on him, taking in his hesitation. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I had my mind on trimming up the hedges on the cross-country course.”

  Spencer followed him without comment across the drive to the rolling green field dotted with stone walls, hedges, and other obstacles. From the top of the highest rise where the first hedge hulked, they looked down on the barns, bright in their fresh white and blue paint and dark gray roofs, ash notwithstanding. In the ring below, riders practiced as an instructor called out commands. The smells of hay and horses wafted over to them, intermixed with a cold tinge of coming fall. Flying over the burned-out Gordath Wood, a search helicopter quartered the woods. The sound faded as the chopper dipped away, but Spencer’s words were lost in the dying roar as he sat down on a tumbling stone wall intermixed with hedge.

  “Beg pardon?” Joe asked, intent on evening up the wildly overgrown hedge.

  “I asked, where are you from? You aren’t from around here, are you.”

  “Town called New Braunfels, Texas,” Joe said, clipping away.

  “No kidding,” Spencer said with the tone of one who has never heard of it. “That near Dallas or Houston?”

  Joe stepped back to look over the hedge. Straight. He kicked the clippings underneath and walked to the next, Spencer trailing him. “Neither,” he called over his shoulder. “Outside San Antonio.”

  At the next hedge, Spencer asked, “What brought you to North Salem?”

  “I was traveling for awhile,” Joe replied. “Been on the road about five years now, working where I could. This seemed as a good a place as any to stop.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Goin’ on six, seven months now. I’ve been working here for about six months.”

  “Where did you work before?” Spencer asked.

  “Toomey Feed and Supply.”

  Spencer had a little notebook out, but he wasn’t writing in it. Joe tried to keep a smile off his face. Just two ol’ boys having a chat. He wondered when the bad-cop routine would start.

  “Did you know Lynn Romano well?” the investigator asked.

  Joe kept clipping, his head down. He wondered how much this officer knew, if the grapevine had told him there was something between Lynn and Joe. He didn’t want to talk about it if he didn’t have to, but he didn’t want to appear to be lying.

  In the face of his continued silence, Spencer said, “She was a very pretty girl, wasn’t she?” Despite himself, Joe looked straight at him. The lieutenant held out a small snapshot for him, as if Joe needed to be reminded what she looked like. The picture was one Lynn’s parents had given the police, Lynn looking pretty and informal. Her hair was down about her shoulders, and her eyes were laughing. He had seen that picture before; it had been reprinted in the paper next to one of Dungiven soaring over a jump at Nationals. Joe handed it back, wondering what his face showed.

  “We were seeing each other.”

  Spencer’s eyebrow raised. “Really.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Really,” Joe said, his voice dry.

  “Any idea where she is?”

  Joe shook his head. “Wish I knew.” The words echoed inside him. Wish I knew.

  “But you were seeing her, right? Didn’t you talk? Get to know each other first?”

  Blood pounded in his head. Joe tried to control his anger. “That’s our business,” he said, low-voiced.

  “Now it’s my business,” Spencer snapped. “She’s missing, Joe. So’s a little girl who had nothing to do with whatever you got going on here. I’m investigating arson, insurance fraud, theft, kidnapping—murder? You think I care about your hurt feelings? Your privacy? Where is she, Joe? What happened? Where’s Lynn Romano?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The hilltop was silent for a moment, and a breeze swept through the long grasses, turning them gold for a moment.

  Spencer said: “Did you kill her?”

  Joe shook his head and laughed. It had very little mirth in it.

  “Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights?”

  “You want me to arrest you?”

  Fear gripped him. He didn’t say anything. Locked up . . . Joe pushed the thought away.

  Spencer watched him expressionlessly. Finally he said, “You try to leave town, and I’ll make sure you spend the rest of this investigation in jail.”

  Joe watched him walk down the hill, gray suit flapping in the breeze. After a minute he picked up the trimmers and started on over to the next hedge. He wondered what the detective was going to do next, wondered why he hadn’t been arrested. Sure, he had an alibi for each disappearance, but he doubted that counted for anything. He as good as told Spencer he was a drifter. Joe grew up in a small town; he knew that made him a convenient suspect. He doubted Spencer was just playing fair.

  Time to move on, Joe, a small voice whispered. He ignored it and began shaping the next hedge.

  He drove the back roads from the farm, winding his ancient Impala around the narrow country lane, a cold beer between his knees. He passed Balanced Rock, hulking off the highway, a massive boulder sitting lightly on three small rocks. He shivered for a second. His grandmother had a saying: there’s a goose walking over your grave. Every time I drive by that damn rock, he thought. Gordath Wood crowded in on both sides of the road. Another thing he had never gotten used to. The roads were so narrow, compared to the wide country roads of his native Texas. And there was no sky to speak of. Nothing to let a man look at anything bigger than himself. Sometimes when Joe was feeling poetic, or just a little drunk, he thought that the narrow view translated itself into a narrow mind, and that was why Yankees thought the way they did.

  Of course, he had to admit that if that theory held, then his father, owner of more than a thousand acres of prime farm-land, would be the broadest-minded individual on God’s green earth, instead of the bigoted horse’s ass he was. But Joe still did miss the sky in Texas. He even thought that he might want to go back, just to show it off to Lynn.

  When he first came to the farm he couldn’t help but take notice of Lynn. He dredged up a word he didn’t even think he knew: exotic. Dark hair, olive skin, dark eyes. Tall and slender in her blue jeans and T-shirt and scuffed boots. So serious that when she smiled it was like the sun came out.

  The night Lynn invited him home, he had been sure she was the reason he came north. A sudden thunderstorm had opened up, and the hayloft over the main barn was still open, a shipment of expensive hay still onl
y half-loaded, ready to be ruined. Joe hastily threw a tarp over it and headed down to close the big bay doors against the thunder and lightning. Lynn grabbed the other door and hauled it closed, and they stood in the darkness for a moment, listening to the rain hammering on the metal roof and the faint nervous whinnies of the sensitive horses.

  “I didn’t know you were still here,” she said. They stood so close he could feel the rain on her arms. Water dripped down the walls, and the smell of tanbark and horse manure was thick and unpleasant in the wet air.

  “Had to get the hay covered.”

  He felt rather than saw her nod, heard her draw in a breath.

  “You, um, you want to wait this out in my apartment?” They ran out of the dark indoor arena, getting soaked in the short distance to her apartment over the barn. Upstairs, the windows had been left open, curtains flying, letting in the cold, wet air, smelling of thunderstorms. Rain splatted on the sill. He pulled her close and tasted the rain on her mouth, warm and cold at the same time.

  The worst thing was, he didn’t know if he’d ever find out if the strange restlessness that pushed him his whole life was Lynn. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to show her the Texas sky. He couldn’t even say if this was love. All he knew was that if he had to look up at the white curtains flying in the windows of the barn apartment, and it was no longer her home, it would be more terrible than anything else he could imagine.

  Joe parked the Impala off the street in front of the tired brick buildings that lined downtown and headed for the feed store, the order for Hunter’s Chase crinkling in his back pocket. The little bell tinkled as he walked into the old-fashioned store, the aroma of feed and leather and gear intermingling in the dim light. Jim Toomey, the owner, looked up at his approach, an easy grin on his face.

  “Hey Joe,” he said. “Got an order?”

  “Right here,” he said, pulling it out and handing it over. “Big one this time for the gala.”

  Jim scanned it. “No problem. Helluva thing about those two girls,” he added. “Any news yet?”

  Yeah, the police think I did it. Joe just shook his head. “Nothing yet. How about you?”

  Toomey had gone out with the search parties on his big palomino gelding that he rode western. “Not a thing. The woods are all burned to hell, but that’s about it. She’s probably up in Canada by now, got that horse stashed away on some-body’s stud farm. Shame about that little girl—” His voice faltered, as he remembered that Joe was the one who had let Kate disappear. “Uh—”

  “Yeah. A shame,” Joe said.

  Jim scratched his jaw, uncomfortable.

  “Well, look, I’ll take care of this and deliver it before the gala,” Toomey said hastily. Then, obviously thinking that he had been too abrupt, he added, “Say, you tell that friend of yours . . . What’s his name, Mark? Tell him he owes me twenty bucks on the Sox.”

  Joe was nonplussed. “Mark Ballard?”

  “Yeah, yeah. That’s him. Bartender at the Continental.”

  Joe shrugged. “He left town. Went to Colorado, I heard.”

  Toomey laughed. “Did he? There goes twenty bucks.”

  Joe tried to smile, and the little bell tinkled again when he left. The grapevine had it that Lynn and Mark Ballard had been going out before he and Lynn got together. Lynn herself never mentioned Mark. Joe didn’t want to think about her and Mark together; from the little he knew of the man, he could be an asshole. Not a friend at all, and he wasn’t sure why Toomey thought so. He wasn’t all that sad when he heard Mark had gone out West.

  Would Mark know where she was? He didn’t want to think of Mark and her sleeping together. Still, if there was a chance that Mark knew something . . . Joe started the engine and pulled away from the curb. The Continental would probably have his forwarding address, maybe even his phone. The only thing it would hurt to ask would be his pride.

  The Continental in New Canaan was the local hangout for the horse community. The young people who kept the stables going hung out in the bar, the owners in the upstairs rooms. The restaurant was decorated with wood paneling with brass accents and tasteful hunt scenes. In the dim lighting, deer, elk, bobcats, pheasants, and other wildlife stared down from the walls.

  Joe parked the Impala on the bar side of the building and walked into welcoming coolness. It was only about three, and the bar was deserted except for the bartender. The jukebox played “Thunder Road.” He had once bet Mark that he could walk into the bar at any given moment, and the jukebox would feature Springsteen. Mark had laughed and refused the bet.

  Joe straddled a stool and nodded at the new bartender, a heavyset young man with a round, calm face.

  “What can I get you?” the bartender asked, turning away from the TV high in the corner of the bar. He turned the sound down, and the news anchors finished their wide-eyed report in talking-head silence while an old video of the Gordath Wood fire ran in the background.

  “Budweiser,” Joe said, fishing out some bills.

  “Cooling off out there,” the bartender said when he slid over the bottle.

  “Fall’s coming,” Joe agreed. He forestalled the questions about his drawl and his origins with a question of his own.

  “Is Mike Garson here?”

  The bartender nodded at the short stair leading to the front entrance to the restaurant.

  “In the hostess area. Getting ready for the rush.”

  “You think it’ll be okay to head on in and find him?”

  The bartender frowned. “What’s it about? Maybe I can help.”

  “I need to see if he has Mark Ballard’s address,” Joe said, which was pretty much the truth.

  “Oh. Yeah, you’ll need to ask him.” He nodded again at the door. The door opened again as a few early birds swirled in, and Joe headed for the restaurant.

  Garson was a smallish man, dressed in tan slacks and a golf shirt, his strident New York accent booming as he talked to someone on the phone by the hostess station. He gestured to Joe to wait. Joe pretended to be absorbed in looking at the hunt trophies. Garson made no effort to modulate his voice, and Joe overheard part of the conversation on deliveries. Garson’s end seemed mostly expressions of bonhomie. The conversation wound down, and Joe turned toward Garson as he hung up the phone, shaking his head.

  “Never should’ve gone into the restaurant business,” he said to Joe. The whole thing had been a performance for his benefit; under the social veneer, Garson’s expression was wary. Joe put on a performance of his own, kicker grin, country boy, dumb as dirt.

  “Howdy, Mr. Garson. I don’t know if we’ve met. I’m Joe Felz. I work at Hunter’s Chase. I’m a friend of Mark Ballard.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Mark’s friend,” Garson said expansively. He reached out a hand. “Tell me, why’d that son of a bitch never tell me he was quitting?”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you about, sir,” Joe said. “I was wondering if you had a phone number or address where I could reach him?”

  Garson frowned. “No, no, I don’t think so. Wait a minute—” He began to search through the papers at the cash register, as if he would find it there. “No, no, I don’t think we have it.” His voice was expansive again. “I don’t do much letter writing. Ask my wife. She does the thank-yous and Christmas cards.”

  “What about an address to send his last check to?” Joe suggested, his voice as neutral as possible. Garson looked up from the desk straight at him, all good fellowship gone, and Joe read that look as if it had been spoken. No check had been sent; Garson had no intention of ever sending it. Then the restaurateur’s brow cleared as he thought of a plausible explanation.

  “No, I believe my accountant sent that to his address in town,” he said. He smiled. “Sorry I couldn’t help you,” he said, tones heartier, dismissive. “Maybe the post office.” He waited as Joe nodded and turned to go. Then suddenly he turned back. Garson was still staring at him, a half smile on his face overlaid with irritation.

  “Jes’ one
more question, Mr. Garson,” Joe asked. “Did Mark Ballard ride?”

  As soon as he asked it, he wished he hadn’t. He didn’t need to know that riding had brought Mark and Lynn together.

  Garson was obviously expecting something else.

  “I don’t ask my employees how they spend their free time,” he said finally. “Good-bye.”

  Joe pushed open the heavy door and walked out into the afternoon sunlight.

  It was stupid anyway, thinking that Mark Ballard would know anything about Lynn’s disappearance. The only connection was that he and Lynn had dated awhile. Forget it, he told himself. But as he headed back for his car, he saw a rusted green Volkswagen pull up in a big hurry. The car was still sputtering when the driver got out, grabbing a bulging knapsack. Angie was one of the waitresses; as a regular, Joe knew her casually. A glimmer of an idea came to him as she hightailed it for the employee entrance. Joe looked at his watch. He had stuff to do at the farm, but it could wait until tomorrow. It wouldn’t hurt to see if Angie knew anything about Mark’s whereabouts.

  The bar was filling up when he went back in. Joe took up his seat at the corner. The bartender looked up from an order, surprised.

  “Did you find Garson?” he asked, sliding over two collins glasses topped with limes to a pair of suits at the bar.

  “Yeah.” Joe pulled out another couple of bucks. “Might as well have another beer before I head back.”

  He sat nursing it, waiting for Angie, wondering if she would have time to talk with him. All of a sudden the place was packed. The bartender looked up at the clock just as Angie burst in, tying her apron around her waist.

  “Sorry sorry sorry,” she panted, pulling a tray from behind the bar. Joe watched her in action, admiring her trim figure in dark jeans and the hunter-green polo shirt that was emblazoned with The Continental in gold across the back. He sipped his beer in quiet, nodding to a few people he knew, waiting for Angie to get a break.