by Lesley Diehl
Jeremiah and Megan exchanged looks.
“I’m being an old mother hen, aren’t I? Go on then. Do your work.” I was being overprotective of Megan as if I thought a girl, rather woman, couldn’t do the work. I did it. Why couldn’t she?
The door to the barn swung open. Father Charles entered, accompanied by his two young goons.
“Call Jake,” I said to Jeremiah. He nodded and flipped open his cell.
“This is a friendly visit to see Megan. I mean no harm.”
No harm. Backed by his muscle? Ha.
Before I could step forward to confront him, Megan pushed in front of me. She set down the pitcher she was carrying in which to collect the caustic and ripped her safety goggles off her head, dropping them beside the container.
“I don’t want to talk to you.” She raised her hands and laid them on Father’s chest, shoving with her entire body. Taken by surprise, he staggered and might have fallen if one of his companions hadn’t caught him. His mouth opened, baring tiny, sharp teeth. A flush appeared on his upper cheeks. He raised his hand as if to strike Megan, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her behind me. I wouldn’t outweigh Father, but I was as tall as he.
“Hit me instead, or don’t you like to pick on those your own size?”
“She attacked me first.”
“And you’re trespassing.” I turned to Megan. “Go do your work. I’ll take care of this.” She hesitated. “Now, Megan.” I wanted her out of the way. If Father and his sidekicks pressed their attack, I didn’t want Megan to get hurt. I felt Jeremiah at my side.
“Jake will be here in a few minutes.”
Jeremiah held two grain shovels. He handed one to me. Megan picked up her pitcher and safety glasses. I nodded to her. “It’s fine.”
Our attention was drawn to the sound of a police siren followed by the crunch of gravel as a county SUV sped up my drive.
Jake stepped through the open door, hand on the revolver at his hip.
“We were just leaving,” said Father.
“Oh, you’re leaving all right, but in my custody unless Hera decides not to press charges.”
I hesitated long enough to see one of the men wrinkle his brow in concern and the other swallow a lump in his throat, long enough to observe a bead of sweat begin its journey down the side of Father’s long forehead and into his beard, just long enough to know I’d won this round. I sighed inwardly.
“I don’t think that’s necessary. They probably got lost and thought I had a tour scheduled at this time. Of course, that doesn’t account for their poor manners.”
“Poor manners? That girl over there attacked me.” Father pointed in Megan’s direction as she scurried to the back of the barn. “I should be pressing charges.” His two goons nodded in agreement.
“You press charges, I’ll press charges,” I said.
Father hesitated a moment, then shook his head.
“So, I guess it’s a matter of apologizing to Hera for your lack of social graces in her barn then,” Jake said.
“I’m not apologizing to anyone.” Father’s face purpled in color.
I crossed my arms in front of me. “Okay, then. He was trespassing and threatened Megan and me. Jeremiah, too.”
A vein in the middle of Father’s forehead throbbed as if it would burst.
“Well, I’m waiting. We all are.” Jake’s hand remained on his gun, and he tapped his toe as if ticking off seconds.
“I’m sorry for having inconvenienced you. I can see how busy you are. I was inconsiderate.” Father’s eyes did not meet mine but were fixed on a spot just over my head.
Some apology, I thought, and was about to express my disgust when I heard a scream from the other end of the barn.
“My eye!” yelled Megan.
I ran to the area where we kept the caustic in a fifty-five gallon drum. Megan was bent over the pitcher used to collect the solution. Her hands covered her eyes, her goggles lay on the floor beside her.
I grabbed her and ran her over to the wash station, flooding her eyes with saline solution. I turned to Jake. “I’ve done all I can do, but she needs medical attention. Now.”
“We’ll take the county SUV.” Jake grabbed her and carried her to the car. I sat in the back with her and continued to flush the eye with solution from a squeeze bottle. Several minutes later, we pulled up in front of hospital emergency.
“What’s the caustic?” asked a doctor as Megan was wheeled into an examining room.
“It’s sodium hydroxide,” I said.
He groaned and shook his head, then pulled the curtain closed.
Jake and I sat in the waiting room. Jeremiah joined us seconds later.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice choked by anxiety.
“I guess she decided to go ahead and pull the caustic, but in all the disturbance with Father, she forgot to put her safety goggles back on. She’d picked them up with the pitcher and must have simply stuck them on the top of her head,” I said.
“I hate to say it, but I’ve pulled caustic without my goggles on,” said Jeremiah, “and I’ve never gotten it in my eye.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t rattled by someone just having tried to hit you,” I replied, “and maybe you’ve been lucky.”
“I don’t understand. How did it get into her eye?” asked Jake.
“I don’t know that yet. She was too upset to talk much.”
It was over an hour later when the doctor summoned us to come into the screened off examining area. Megan was sitting up with pillows propped behind her head, and she wore a gauze bandage over her eye.
“She was lucky. I could see where the caustic hit, just below her pupil, and it tracked its way down the eyeball and pooled in the lower lid. It will take a while before those burned cells repair themselves. Meanwhile I’ve called Dr. Kindle, who’s an ophthalmologist from Syracuse. He has an office here in Libertyville and has hours today. If you bring her right in, he’ll see her.”
“I’ll take her in,” said Jeremiah.
“No, I’ll do it. You get back to the brewery,” I said.
In the frantic rush to get Megan medical help, I’d forgotten about the reason for her accident—Father Charles’ presence in my brew barn. I hoped he wasn’t still there.
Jeremiah read my mind. “I made certain they left.”
“I hope you didn’t have to run him off with your shovel.”
“He was running before I had the chance to threaten him.”
“And you locked the barn.”
Jeremiah gave me a look of grave disappointment, but all he said was, “Hera.”
Megan reached out to Jeremiah before he left the room, and the two of them embraced, briefly and awkwardly, but with intense feeling on both their faces.
“Hera, I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Sorry? What do you mean?”
“I should have remembered to wear my goggles. Jeremiah told me over and over again. I forgot.”
I patted her hand. “It was an accident. Can you tell us exactly how it happened?”
“I realized you could handle Father better than I could, so I decided to get on with my work, but I was upset. I thought he was going to attack you and Jeremiah, and I didn’t know what to do. I opened the valve on the supply drum and let it pour into my pitcher up to the level necessary. I turned it off, but I was still leaning over it, and a final drop fell, splashed back up off the surface of the caustic in the pitcher and hit me.” Megan looked at me with her unbandaged eye. “I forgot to put my goggles back on after I confronted Father. I picked up the pitcher and propped the glasses on my head. After I pushed him, I kind of ran out of steam and was glad to be out of it. I never gave a thought to what I was doing. I kept thinking about how I hated that man.”
“Let’s get you off to Dr. Kindle to see what he says about that eye,” I said.
The doctor in emergency nodded. “My examination says the caustic never touched her retina, but I could be wrong. Dr. Kindle has the equip
ment for a more thorough examination.”
Dr. Kindle’s analysis of the eye injury agreed with the doctor’s at the hospital, but to be certain there would be no lasting effects and no impairment of her vision, he set up an appointment at Syracuse Medical Center for the next day. One of us, either Jeremiah or I, would have to remain at the brewery. I reluctantly agreed to let Jeremiah take Megan to Syracuse.
When we returned home from the appointment, I sent Megan upstairs to her room with Jeremiah to play nurse, and I prepared some tea for all of us. While the brew steeped, I decided to double-check the brew barn doors. True to his word, Jeremiah had locked all of them. The brewery was as secure as door locks could make it, but I knew how easily locks could be jimmied, broken or picked. Leaving the brew barn without a person on the premises bothered me, especially with Father and his crew loose in the countryside.
The two followers always in attendance with him didn’t look to me to be spiritual persuaders, but rather street fighters. I knew taking his charge away from him and alienating Megan made him mad, but forcing him to offer that apology today sent him into a rage, one I was certain was directed at me and would continue unabated until he got his revenge. I worried he’d try to take it out on those I loved.
I heard the barn door open. Jake stood in the doorway. “Let’s take a look at that fifty-five gallon drum of caustic,” he said.
I felt the blood drain out of my face, and I clutched at his sleeve. “What are you saying?”
“I’m sure it was an accident, but I should have done this earlier.”
We walked to the drum seated on its rack and tilted at an angle to allow the caustic to flow smoothly out of the valve once it was opened. Jake bent his head toward the valve.
“Stop. Put these one before you get your face anywhere near that stuff.” I handed him a pair of safety goggles, and I put on another pair.
“Looks fine to me. You take a look.”
I leaned over the valve and examined the threads on it. It appeared to be screwed firmly into the drum.
I didn’t know I had been holding my breath, but now I let it out in a relieved rush of air. An accident.
“Take me through this cleaning process, Hera.”
I walked through the barn back to the brew kettle. “I’ll simplify it for you.”
“Oh, please do.”
“Don’t get sarcastic. CIP-ing is a complicated process unless you’re familiar with it.”
“Don’t use brewers’ jargon with me. I’m just a deputy sheriff, a country boy, you know.”
“CIP stands for clean in place. The brew kettle needs to have proteins and other residue removed for another brew, and you can’t put it into a dishwasher. It’s too big.”
“Right.”
“So look here.” I pointed out a spray ball attached to the inside top of the kettle. “I take the drain hose and attach it to a portable pump. Another hose goes from the pump into the tank so I have a closed loop to run the water and caustic I’ve added through the spray ball to clean the vessel.”
“How hot is the water in there?”
“About 130 degrees. I’ve pumped around thirty gallons of water into the tank.”
“How much caustic do you add?”
“Half an orange juice pitcher full.” I laughed. “I know that’s not very precise, but it works. You saw the pitcher Megan was carrying.”
“You pour the caustic into the tank. Then what?”
“Seal the tank and turn on the pump. I run it for about twenty minutes, then stop, disconnect the drain hose and put the hose back into the drain and carefully drain the solution out. The vessel is then flushed with potable H2O, uh, water.” I stopped to make certain Jake was following me.
“I think I see what’s happening.”
“There’s more.” I walked over to my fermenting tanks. “We sanitize the fermenter by putting tepid water into it and adding food grade phosphoric acid.”
“Acid! You use acid too? This is a dangerous place.”
“Not if you follow safety regulations. Besides, the acid is, as I said, food grade, only a two to three percent solution. You could drink it, and it wouldn’t hurt you. The fermentation process only works with the right PH, around 5.2. The acid solution insures the fermenter is at that PH. The caustic we put in there has a PH of about thirteen, so we need to bring it down.”
Jake walked around my equipment, then ducked his head under the brew-house to take a closer look at the hoses running out into drains or to other tanks.
“If someone detached the drain hose while the pump was running …”
“If the hot caustic solution was in there, it would pour all over the floor,” I said.
“Or onto a person who might not be expecting it.”
“Well, only if they were lying on the floor right under the drain outlet. That’s impossible.”
“Not if the person were unconscious or got wedged in there somehow.”
“You’re being paranoid, Jake. That’s not likely to happen.”
He didn’t reply, only gave me a knowing look. He was right. A brewery was a place where an unsuspecting person could run into trouble either by stumbling into it or through foul play on the part of someone who intended harm. This was a perfect setting for an assault or a murder. Both had already happened. Here in my brewery.
The late afternoon sun sank below the level of my brew barn’s high windows, darkening the large space. The towering tanks no longer gave off the gleam of shiny metal made rosy by its golden rays. The barn, once welcoming with its warm smells of malt and yeast dining on sugars, stilled as if waiting for something to happen. I thought I heard the heart of the brewery stop, and with it I felt my work die also. I was terrified—of what, I could not say—but I wanted to run for the door. I shivered. This once friendly place now threatened me.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Jake must have noticed the change in my attitude, as well as heard something in my voice, for he came over and put his arm around my shoulders. He walked me out the door, locked it, and we continued back to the house.
“My mouth is dry as ashes,” I said.
“It’s hot out there. I’ll grab an ale out of the fridge,” he said.
“No. Anything but a beer. I can’t drink a beer.”
Eleven
Jake seemed to understand that I needed him in my bed that night, but only to hold me close, not to engage in more than affectionate physical contact. As soon as his arms loosened around me, I slipped from the sheets and returned downstairs to brew myself some herbal tea. In the familiar darkness of the kitchen I dropped a teabag into a mug of hot water, then stood at the window watching moonlight and shadow playing across the yard and crawling up the sides of my barn. It looked as if the building was a living organism, undulating with sinuous movement.
A hand touched my shoulder, and I jumped.
“Are you all right?” asked Megan.
She almost melted into the shadows. Were it not for the white bandage over her eye, she would have been invisible, a Cyclops in my house. I giggled with the thought of it.
“You’re not going to be hysterical, are you?” She tipped her head to one side and looked at me with concern.
“No.” I shared the one-eyed creature image with her.
“It’s going to be fine.” She reached up to touch the dressing.
“We’ll know that tomorrow for sure when you visit the hospital.”
“You’ll see.” She put out her hand and touched mine, a gesture meant to be reassuring, but all I could think was how small and vulnerable her fingers felt on mine.
“I feel cursed. Too many bad things happening out there.” I nodded toward my barn. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I have a sense that something else will occur, and somehow it will be my fault. I usually can shake off problems, but suddenly I feel darkness closing in on me, and my brain keeps telling me to get out, get out.”
“I think you need some down time. Take a break. Let Jeremiah and me deal with the brewery.”
I stared at her bandaged eye. “You’re kidding, right?”
“It was an accident and one I could have prevented if I’d been vigilant.”
“The next time it might not be an accident. Jake said it earlier tonight. The brewery is a dangerous place. I need to take precautions.”
“I’ll make up signs with huge letters reminding us of safety precautions. We can add them to the OSHA regulations already posted as an extra reminder for all of us.” She leaned toward me as if eager to assure me of the seriousness of her offer.
“If it will make you feel better, have one of the local security companies come out and take a look at the place.” Jake stood in the doorway, his voice filling the darkness with the sound of male certainty.
“I didn’t mean for you to get up. You have duty tomorrow early, right?”
“I repeat. You need a state-of-the-art security system.”
“Right.” I sighed.
“Not much enthusiasm, old girl. You’re tired. Back to bed with you,” Jake said. “And I’m with Megan. You could use some time off from this place. A long weekend in the Adirondacks would do us both some good.” He hesitated. “I mean, as soon as I wrap up this murder case.”
We all returned to our beds, but Jake left before the sun came up. An hour later Megan tapped at my door.
“We’re leaving now. I thought you might want to know. It’s after eight.”
“Oh, my God,” I said. “I haven’t slept this late in years.”
She opened the door and handed me a cup of coffee. “Maybe this will help.”
She said goodbye and left me sitting up in the bed, sipping my caffeine. The phone rang. It was Sally.
“I heard about the accident at your place. You sure do have the worst luck, don’t you?”
“Or something.” I didn’t mean for my voice to sound so down, but I knew it did.
“What do you mean?”