by Karen Randau
He helped me find the right tire, handed me a bottle of water, and led me to a waiting room where a silver-haired gentleman glanced up from a newspaper. He offered a brief nod before he resumed his reading.
“Give us about a half hour to mount your tire and wash the mud off your Jeep,” the attendant said before he disappeared behind a door with a sign that read, Authorized Staff Only.
After confirming that my computer didn’t break when I dropped it while racing through the hospital parking lot, I used my phone to check for messages and opened the email from David. It contained a photo of the cow authorities discovered on the banks of the Rim Country Reservoir. I studied the surroundings.
The cow laid on a plot of gravel that looked like a launch point for small boats, next to a row of leafless trees and three boulders half submerged in the water. Across from the boulders, a steep crag contained a shallow cave. Along the opposite bank, a stand of ponderosa pines topped a mesa with what looked like a dirt road. In the distance, a cement barrier marked the dam.
I knew approximately where to search, but the reservoir covered a lot of distance. Even if I had to walk the entire circumference, I needed to find that tiny boat launch.
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
I looked up to see the friendly employee who helped me earlier.
“Your Jeep is ready.”
“Thank you.” I took a screen shot of the photo before returning my phone to my jeans pocket and following the worker to the Jeep.
He held the door for me and wished me a happy day as I drove away, toward the opposite end of the parking lot to shop for Katy. I dashed around the store finding the food Katy requested, paid, and jogged to my vehicle.
Back at the hospital, I parked close to the revolving door and jogged to the room where Cliff and Travis slept.
Katy set down what looked like an ancient magazine.
She gushed over the salad, fruits, hummus, and whole wheat crackers I brought her, then I gave her a quick hug.
“If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late to meet David at the trailhead below Fishhook Trail,” I said.
“That’s a scary road.” She scooped up a forkful of lettuce. “Be careful.”
I scurried back to the Jeep and arrived at the trailhead with two minutes to spare. David emerged from a huge Dodge pickup with big lights on the front roof.
“Hi,” he said as he approached me.
“Is that a roll bar inside the cab of your truck?”
“Yep. I enjoy off-roading, but it can get dangerous. Safety first is my motto. Learned that in Boy Scouts, thanks to you and your late husband Jared. Ready to maneuver up Fishhook Trail?”
“I looked at the photo you sent me of the reservoir. I have a general idea of where it is. Would you mind going there before we get to Rim Vista?”
He hesitated and scrunched his face as if he were about to say no. “I need to keep an eye on things at work.”
“Yes, but we also need to keep things moving quickly so we can get our community safe and back to normal.” I held off telling him I wanted to stop at Hawthorne Farms.
He blew out a deep breath and looked at his watch before nodding. “We can collect that dirt sample, and I can test it today. I carry a shovel in case I get stuck while off-roading. And …” He opened his truck’s tailgate and rummaged through a camouflage-colored duffel.
“There’s no cell service where we’re going.” He handed me a two-way radio and showed me how to use it. With his hand on the driver’s side door handle, he hollered, “I know a better way to get there than Fishhook Trail. It goes around Rim Vista and joins the highway north of town. Follow me.”
He led me to a dirt road with eroded edges that dropped off into a gorge. The farther we drove into the mountains, the narrower and more winding the road became, and the gorge widened and deepened into a canyon. Despite our path’s harrowing hairpin curves cramped by erosion, a one-way bridge that took us across the canyon, and three shallow river crossings, this route’s lack of traffic earned it the status as “better than Fishhook Trail.”
We approached a dead end two hours later. David turned right onto a wider and flatter gravel road that ended at the paved highway. A sign pointed left to go the ten miles to Rim Vista and right for the twenty-minute drive to Hawthorne Farms and the half-hour trip to Rim Country Reservoir.
We went right.
I slowed as I passed Hawthorne Farms. In various fields, the owners grew different vegetables, nuts, and blueberries in fields separated by ditches full of reddish-brown water. A red building contained a store advertising organic produce and homemade jams, bread, and crafts.
I was glad there were no cars out front. When I came back, I didn’t want to deal with a gaggle of tourists.
Beyond the store was a barn with a tractor out front. Various varieties of fruit trees secluded a yellow and white house.
Everything seemed eerily quiet.
Ten minutes later, David turned left into a campground shaded by ponderosa pines along with oak and juniper trees. I parked next to him under an oak, beside a rock fire pit and a picnic table that needed a coat of paint.
He pulled a shovel from the bed of his pickup and propped the wooden handle on his shoulder as we entered a trail that led to a path encircling the reservoir.
We paused so I could open the screenshot of the dead cow.
“There’s the dam,” I said, gesturing to the east. “And there’s the cliff where I think the boat launch is.” I pointed west.
“That wall of boulders looks like it’s a mile long.” He asked to hold my phone, so he could scrutinize the photo. He tapped the area containing a hill with a flat top. “That mesa is over there to the north. Let’s start at the south end of the rock wall.”
We tried five different locations before finding a boat launch with a line of leafless trees and three submerged boulders. He dug out a shovel full of dirt while I scanned the skyline.
“Hey, David.” I touched his arm. “Don’t look up, but someone’s watching us from that mesa over there.”
29
I counterfeited a laugh as I turned David around. With our backs facing the mesa where a man stood watching us, I feigned a selfie. Instead of focusing on us, I zoomed in on the stranger and snapped a photo.
“My paramedic friend, Taylor Finnegan, seems afraid since she started working with the CDC. She was extra surreptitious when she suggested we test the water, which I interpreted as the spot at the reservoir where they found the dead cow. We need to be careful.”
David took my phone, looked at the picture, and pretended to laugh as he pointed at the screen. “This is too grainy to get a good look at the guy. I don’t think I know him. Do you?”
I slapped my knee to convince the watcher that David’s statement tickled me. “No.” I memorized his lanky build, tucked-in, short-sleeve shirt, and jeans. “Let’s get out of here fast. That man is giving me the willies.”
David held the shovel full of dirt and gravel in front of him as we scurried toward our vehicles.
“We should stop at the farm we passed when we drove here,” I said as I quick-stepped to keep up with David. “I have a hunch about the produce I bought from them at the farmer’s market before everyone in Rim Vista got sick. You need to test their dirt and blueberries while you’re analyzing what’s in that shovel.”
At the vehicles we had parked in a campground, David opened the back of his pickup long enough to lay the shovel of dirt against several other objects, so it wouldn’t spill. I took out my gun, forced a round into the chamber, and stuffed it in my concealed waistband holster.
“If anyone asks, you’re my son,” I said as I darted toward the Jeep. “We’re out for a day of off-roading, but first we wanted to find something we lost while fishing last weekend.”
“Got it.” He jumped into his pickup and led me away from the campground and onto the highway for the 20-minute drive to the fields I had seen earlier.
At the turnoff, a wooden arch emb
lazoned with the Hawthorne Farms logo spanned the property’s entrance. We entered a two-way, paved lane and stopped at a section that contained different varieties of Southern blueberry bushes.
“I didn’t know you could grow blueberries in Arizona.” David exited his vehicle and followed me across a ditch toward the bushes.
“I had the same question when I talked to the owner of this property at the farmer’s market,” I said. “He told me he grows drought-tolerant kinds. According to him, all you need is organic material, acidic soil that drains well, lots of water, and ways to protect the bushes from our hot sun. Like those.” I gestured toward rows of sunscreens on the west side of the plants. “Do you have gloves in your duffel of supplies?”
“Of course.” He ran back to his truck.
“If my hunch is right, we don’t want to touch the dirt or the blueberries with our bare hands.” I left out my concern that I already had touched the blueberries. Why didn’t I get sick? Luck? Or was I wasting our time?
He reached into his pickup’s bed and extracted two sets of gardening gloves, handing me a pair.
I donned the gloves, kneeled to scoop up a handful of dirt, and smelled it. “Just as I thought. It smells like pine.”
“This is the Tonto National Forest.” He gestured in a circular motion. "We’re surrounded by a huge stand of ponderosa pines.” He scraped soil into his gloved palm and sniffed. “Wouldn’t we expect a pine scent?”
“Maybe. Roll that dirt up in one of your gloves.” I picked a handful of blueberries and handed them to him, along with my gloves. “Put these in the opposite glove. Touch none of it.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have inhaled it.” He lifted an eyebrow toward me, and we considered our potential mistake.
A silver SUV caught my attention as it turned onto the property.
“We’re about to meet agro tourists, organic produce shoppers, or the man who watched us at the reservoir,” I said. “Let’s go to the store and act like sightseers.”
David rolled up his gloves as he walked toward his truck, then followed me to park in front of the red store I had seen earlier. The SUV stopped across from us. I glanced over and waved at a silver-haired man who had the general build of the guy who watched us while we dug dirt from the reservoir. Despite his short-sleeve shirt and jeans the same color as the grainy photo on my phone, I didn’t want to jump to the conclusion he was the same individual. Many people in this area dressed like that.
A person with a baseball cap pulled down to her reflective sunglasses sat in the passenger seat, her face turned away from us. All I could see was a turquoise earring and the dainty chain of a necklace that disappeared inside the neck of a beige T-shirt.
David and I walked side-by-side to the store’s front door. A typed sign taped to the inside of the glass door read, Closed until further notice due to illness.
Footsteps and a cigarette scent behind us prompted me to turn and greet the white-haired man from the silver SUV. He was shorter than David, with a faded tattoo of a white and yellow chamomile flower on his right arm, hazel eyes, and bushy brows. A red pack of cigarettes peeked from his breast pocket, and he held one in his right hand. He took a drag, turned his head to blow out the smoke, threw the butt on the wooden sidewalk, and ground it under his gray hiking boot.
“How disappointing.” I waved the smoke away from my face. “The store isn’t open. I heard their homemade jams are delicious.”
“So I’ve been told. Too bad. My grandson and I saw you digging at the reservoir. Did you lose something?”
Grandson? The person sitting in his passenger seat had dangly earrings and a feminine chain necklace. Her skin and jawline looked female. This guy’s attempted deceit sent chills up my spine. I didn’t trust him, and now I was positive he was the voyeur from the reservoir.
David placed his hand on my shoulder. “My mom lost an heirloom ruby ring when we fished in that general area last weekend. We dug around at the boat launch we used, but we didn’t find it.”
The stranger angled his head and lifted his left brow as if he thought, I know you’re lying. I told myself to stop imagining things.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The man stretched his hand toward David. “Frank Miller here.”
“Mark Smith,” David fibbed as he pumped Frank’s hand.
If Frank tried to deceive us about the person sitting in his passenger seat, I doubted that was his real name. It was subtle, but I detected a slight accent. European?
“This is my mother, Anne.” David gestured toward me.
The man’s half grin worried me that he knew about our deception as much as I knew about his.
“Is that so?” Frank faced me and offered a tight smile. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I noticed you’re driving two different vehicles.”
I laughed. “My husband bought a new Jeep, and I get to be the first to take it off-roading.”
David made a big deal of rolling his eyes. “I’m taking Mom on an easy trail. I’ll show her how to do it, and she’ll follow me in her Jeep.”
“Ah.” Frank turned toward his vehicle. “Have fun.”
I rushed behind Frank to look at his passenger. The bumps under that cotton and lace T-shirt belonged to a woman, not a teenaged boy out for a day of fun with his grandfather.
The passenger placed the side of her right hand perpendicular on the palm of her left hand as if chopping. She raised her hands, made chopping movements, and smoothed her T-shirt as Frank looked her way.
That was strange.
“It was great meeting you, Frank.” I offered a handshake. “I hope you enjoy your day with your grandson. Wish me luck as I learn to drive on a jagged Jeep trail.”
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Dark Horse Trail,” David said from behind me.
Frank smiled as he sank behind his steering wheel. “I’ve enjoyed that trail myself. We might go there later. Good luck with your first experience off-roading, ma’am. You should have no problem.”
I turned toward David’s truck. “He’s lying. Frank’s passenger is a woman, not a boy. He has a slight European accent. I’m sure his name isn’t Frank Miller, but I’ll look him up when I get home.”
“I didn’t hear the accent. Are you sure?”
“Yes. Get on your two-way radio once we’re on the highway and lie about where we will stop. If he’s listening, maybe we can get him to go after us while we watch them go by. I’d be willing to bet his passenger takes off her cap as soon as they think we’re out of sight.”
Frank watched David and me drive away. We paused at the entrance to the highway.
“Hey, Mom,” he said on the two-way radio. “We will turn left here, then right onto Dark Horse Trail in about two miles. Let’s pull over when we get there. I want to take a few minutes to give you some pointers and review the safety rules.”
At the intersection for Dark Horse Trail, we turned left instead of right. We parked behind a hedge of manzanita bushes and pines that lined the highway. Crouched behind the camouflage, we only had to wait fifteen minutes for Frank’s SUV to drive toward us, slow, and turn right.
“Lena?” David whispered.
As I suspected, Frank’s passenger had removed her cap, revealing the long, blond curls of David’s former girlfriend. The one who claimed to move to Phoenix to accept a new job after breaking up with David because of his responsibility to Mary’s daughter Emma.
Were she and Frank the Russian connections in this mystery? And were they connected to whatever happened to Mary in Afghanistan?
30
As we hurried back to the vehicles we had hid behind trees and manzanita bushes, David described how we could avoid both the roadblock on the north end of Rim Vista and any more contact with Frank.
“You and Emma need to stay at my house,” I said. “I have an advanced security system.”
“They haven’t tried to harm us yet,” he said. “I also own a security camera. I got it to watch for Mary coming to v
isit, and then Emma and I also noticed the elk as they roamed down our street.”
“A single camera differs from an entire system like mine.” I described my setup.
He insisted that Emma was safe with a reliable babysitter, and he needed to get to work to track his Iraqi-American employee Jacob Haddad.
“Why do you still suspect him? Whoever interrogated him at the airport let him go. I’ve been listening to the news. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack on our town. Jihadists are quick to do that. I think Russians attacked us, not Iraqis. I’m ninety percent sure.”
“I want to be safe and cover the other ten percent in case you’re wrong. Also, if Lena is one of the Russians you suspect, then I need to make sure there aren’t others among my employees.”
He insisted on following me home and going inside to make sure I had no issues. “That first night you came over to my house to talk about Mary, Lena asked a lot of questions about you. I thought nothing of it then. She knows your last name, which means she can find out where you live.”
He said he told Lena I was a neighbor who befriended him as a child and used to take him to Boy Scouts and 4-H with Travis. “She knows your husband and son are sick, but we broke up before you took them to Phoenix.”
I reminded him that someone with a Russian accent tried to inject something into Cliff’s IV, and that was why he was being guarded now. “I’m sure whoever is behind this knows where Cliff and Travis are and that I’m home alone.”
“What a mess.” He asked if there was someone I could ask to stay with me.
“I think I’ll invite the Chief of Police over for dinner. Cliff asked me to keep him informed, but I don’t want to say anything over the phone that eavesdroppers could overhear. Promise me you and Emma will come to my house if anything out of the ordinary happens.”
He promised.
I followed him down a Jeep trail that until two days ago would have terrified me. Now, compared to the back roads I’d navigated with no problem, this route seemed like a gentle ride.
At my house, I opened the security gate and waited for David to pull into the driveway behind me before scanning the area for onlookers. Seeing no one, I locked the gate.