A Dime a Dozen (31 page)

“Zeb Hooper’s been trying to buy this place from me for years,” he said finally, dropping the curtain and falling back in his chair. “If I’d had any sense, I would have sold it to him and been done with it a long time ago.”

Thirty-Three

A wave of exhaustion washed over me as I opened the door and stepped outside into the fresh air. Poor Lowell was so sick, it hung in the air around him like a damp, thick cloud. I had said goodnight and seen myself out, and now I simply stood on the stoop, taking in the last tiny glimmer of the sunset and trying to pull myself together.

Truth was, I liked the old guy. Despite his crankiness, despite his misguided past, I thought he had a sharp wit and a way of cutting through to the core that probably cost him a few friends but made for a straight-from-the-hip kind of fellow.

Taking a deep breath, I headed for my car, but before I got there, I heard a strange noise coming from the side of the house. Glancing around, I realized that the place was deserted, though a big spotlight mounted under the eaves kept the driveway from being too dark.

Whoosh!
There it was again—an odd sound, like the breathing of a mechanical dragon. Senses alert, I took a few steps toward the noise to see if I could figure out what it was.

I didn’t have to go far. Beside the house, next to the broken-down tractor, a man was standing in a circle of artificial light, welding a piece of metal with a blow torch. I couldn’t see the man’s face because of the dark protective face gear he wore, but I had a feeling it was the orchard foreman, Pete Gibson. I hesitated, wanting to speak with him but fearing he might in some way be dangerous.

“Callie?”

The torch fire disappeared as he flipped back the protective cover to reveal a red, sweaty face.

“Hey, Pete,” I said, stepping closer. “You fixing the tractor?”

“Trying to,” he said. “This has ended up being a major ordeal.”

He put down the torch and removed the headgear completely.

“Were you in the house?” he asked. “With Lowell?”

“Yes.”

“How is he?”

“Tired. Very tired.”

He nodded, looking upset.

“How about a cold drink?” he asked. “I know I could use one.”

Without waiting for my reply, he started walking away. Confused, I wasn’t sure where he was going or if I should follow. I wanted to talk to him, but I had had something a little less isolated in mind—for example, in the middle of the day, surrounded by other workers. Here, we seemed to be the only ones anywhere around. Twilight had settled over the farm, and beyond the bright lights on the side of the house, it was getting quite dark.

Fortunately, I soon saw where Pete was going. There was a big white building about fifty feet away, some kind of oversized shed with a long, low porch across the front. On the porch, against the wall, was a red “Coca Cola” cooler the size and shape of a top-loading freezer. With a quick glance back at the house, I walked over to the cooler. Pete held the heavy lid open for me while I peered at the selection and finally chose a bottle of water. He grabbed a soda for himself and then lowered down the lid.

“Wow, that brings back memories,” I said, gesturing toward an old bottle opener mounted on the side. “Do they even make those kinds of bottle caps anymore? The ones that have to be popped off?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied. He hoisted himself up onto the cooler and slid into a sitting position, his back against the wall. “Join me,” he added, so I turned around and did the same, ending up next to him on top of the cooler, looking back out at the driveway and the house. “I’ve had a tough day,” he said. “It’s nice to take a break and relax for a minute.”

“Working late again?” I asked.

He took a long sip of his soda.

“I guess tonight I just didn’t feel like going home.”

“Where do you live?”

“Here at the orchard,” he said. “I’ve got an apartment up over the main garage.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Yep. It’s mine for now, anyway.”

We were companionably quiet, though my mind was full of questions. I wanted so much to ask him about Enrique and that last day, yet I wasn’t quite sure how to approach the subject.

And actually, as I tried to think things through, I realized that just sitting there on the porch was kind of pleasant. The evening was cool but not cold, and fireflies lit the gathering darkness like tiny twinkling night-lights. There was a scent to the mountains I had always loved, an earthy, loamy smell that seemed to seep out of the ground and hover in the air every night at dusk. I rested my head against the rough wooden wall behind me and inhaled deeply, looking up at the black sky, trying to make out the silhouettes of the mountains against the backdrop of stars.

“You know,” Pete said from his perch beside me, “before we found Enrique’s body yesterday, my biggest worry was who you really were and why Karen sent you here. Now everything’s changed. Life’s too short. If she wants it, she can have it.”

He took a long draw from his bottle, gulping the liquid down.

“I’m sorry, Pete,” I said, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared out into the distance.

“Yeah, well, you’d have to say that, now wouldn’t you? Don’t worry, Callie. I’m not going to make trouble. If Karen’s looking for a fight, she’s going to be disappointed. That’s what I told my lawyer this afternoon. Just let it go.”

I let that sit between us for a minute, my mind racing. What did Karen want? Who did Pete think I was?

“Look, I’m afraid you have the wrong impression of me,” I said. “I’m not sure what’s going on here—”

“Yeah, right. I had my lawyer check you out, just to find out what you really were. A surveyor? An appraiser? Turns out you’re an attorney. Big surprise.”

“You had your lawyer check me out? Why? I told you who I was yesterday. My late husband was Bryan Webber, son of Dean and Natalie Webber.”

He hopped down off of the the cooler and strolled to a recycling bin filled almost to the top with empty bottles. He set his down on top of the pile and then looked at me, hands on his hips.

“Why did you come here to the orchard? Why did you ask Danny to give you a tour?”

“Because I’m interested in the migrants. I wanted to see what the migrants’ work is like, how an orchard functions.”

“Hah!” he said loudly. “So what does she plan to do? Wait until he’s dead or start legal proceedings now?”

I swallowed hard, trying to get a handle on the situation.

“Pete, just tell me what you think is going on,” I said. “Obviously, somebody, somewhere, has gotten their lines crossed.”

“Do we have to play games on top of everything else? The will, Callie! Lowell’s will! Karen’s been gone for all these years, and now she’s back, swooping in for the kill. Never mind that I’ve run this place single-handedly since he got sick. Never mind that I’ve been a good son to him since the day he took me in. Never mind—” his voice cracked, and I was surprised to realize that he was crying. “Never mind that I love him, and it breaks my heart that he’s dying. He’s the only father I ever knew, and he put me in the will because he loves me like I’m his own son. If she wants to fight me on it, then fine. Let her have it. Once he’s dead, maybe I don’t want to stick around here anyway.”

He finished his speech and sat on the porch rail, his back to me. I felt strangely moved, and I had to fight the urge to go to him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“It took staring death in the face, I guess,” he continued softly. “Made me realize that there are things more important than owning a big house, owning some land. I’d rather spend what little time Lowell has left taking care of stuff around here and making him comfortable. The rest doesn’t really matter, in the end.”

I slid down off of the cooler and set my bottle on the recycle pile. Then I joined Pete at the porch rail and looked out over the driveway, exhaling slowly.

“Pete, if your lawyer had done a good job when he checked me out, he would’ve seen that my status as a lawyer has nothing to do with you. I work for a philanthropist. I investigate charities.”

As clearly as I could, I explained to him I was an investigator for the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation, and we were hoping to make a substantial donation to MORE.

“I came to Greenbriar to verify their qualifications,” I said. “Part of that includes getting a better understanding of the population they serve. That’s why I needed a tour of the orchard. It had nothing to do with you or Karen. If your lawyer were really thorough, he would’ve realized that I don’t even have a license to practice law in North Carolina.”

He walked to the end of the porch and back, seeming to work things through in his mind.

“Is that the truth?”

“It is. I promise.”

He went to the cooler and pulled out two more drinks, popped the tops on both, and handed one to me.

“Whew,” he said, slipping up onto the cooler again. “I gotta have another one. Maybe Karen’s not plotting against me after all.”

I joined him back on the cooler and asked about the whole situation. According to Pete, he was very suspicious of Karen’s motives in moving to town after ten years of being away, mainly because her return just happened to come several weeks after the changing of Lowell’s will where he made Pete his sole heir.

“And don’t think I didn’t fight him on it,” he said. “She’s his daughter! No matter what’s happened between them, she deserves some inheritance. I told Lowell to split everything down the middle, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Now, with him trying to leave me everything, I’m afraid she’ll contest the will and then I’ll end up with nothing.”

I suggested that perhaps she didn’t even know about the will, that perhaps she had simply come back home in order to mend fences and make peace with her father. But Pete said that if that were the case, then why had she made no attempts to see the man since she moved back?

“Were you aware of Karen’s past connection to Enrique Morales?” I asked, trying to guide the conversation into the area of the murder.

“What, that they were friends as children?” he asked.

“Well, yeah, and the whole barn incident.”

“Oh, that. Sure. Lowell told me about it years ago.”

“Then let me ask you a question,” I said. “Do you think there’s any way Enrique and Karen might have been having a relationship in the present day?”

He thought about that.

“No,” he said finally, shaking his head. “Enrique was a real family man. He and Luisa were together all the time. Even if he’d wanted to have an affair, which I doubt, I can’t imagine how he might have squeezed it in.”

“Couldn’t he have slipped away from the fields once in a while?”

Pete chuckled.

“Enrique had the highest picking quotas of any migrant worker we had. If he were taking time out for hanky-panky, then how’d he manage to pick so many apples? No, there’s just no way.”

I took a sip of my soda, feeling the carbonation tickle my throat.

“Tell me about Enrique’s final day,” I said. “Weren’t you one of the last people to see him alive?”

“Apparently.”

“So what happened?”

He sighed and settled a little more into the wall, his shoulder lightly brushing against mine.

“I’ve been over this with the police about a hundred times today,” he said wearily. “The day Enrique disappeared, he and a couple of the others were picking stragglers. We had finished picking the last of the apples in the high block the day before, and I needed him to go up there and do some clean-up work. I pulled Enrique from the line and told him what I needed him to do.”

“Is that the last you saw of him?”

“No. Just before lunch, he asked if he could borrow the truck. He was real agitated. Said he’d left his lunch back at the dorms and Luisa had their car.”

“Did you let him take the truck?”

“Yeah. Fifteen minutes later, he returned with his lunch.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“He brought the keys into the office and tossed them on the desk. But we didn’t speak. He seemed lost in thought, and I was busy straightening out a distribution problem.”

“What then?”

“As far as I knew, he went back up to the high block to finish the job. The truck went around in the afternoon to gather the last of the apple bins. We put the bins straight into storage, never thinking there might be something funny about one of them. At quitting time, Luisa came and asked me where Enrique was. Turns out, no one had seen him since noon. She was concerned, but what could she do? When he still hadn’t shown up a few hours later, we organized a search. The next morning, the police came and searched again. But we never found him, and no one ever saw anything suspicious.”

“What did you think happened to him?” I asked.

Pete shook his head, holding his bottle with both hands.

“I didn’t have any idea. I knew he loved Luisa and the kids, but the life of a migrant is a difficult thing. It has to get to them sometimes. I figured he skipped town. When that letter came a few weeks later, that confirmed it for me.”

“I think the letter threw off a lot of people. The police included.”