A Flicker of Doubt (Book 4 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) (22 page)

I waited on another customer or two, happy
to be back in the groove of working the candleshop while my mind
wandered among the possibilities. Becka’s death, Cyrus’s mysterious
debilitation and Runion’s odd behavior swirled through my mind.

I was pulled out of my musings by the chime
over the front door. One look at Mrs. Jorgenson’s face and I knew I
was in serious trouble.

“
Harrison Black, I knew you
could be dense at times, but I always gave you credit for having a
minimum of common sense. It appears that I was wrong.”

“
Good morning, Mrs.
Jorgenson. And how are you today?”

“
In your office.
Now.”

I followed her back to my cubbyhole,
wondering what I’d done to infuriate her so much. Eve looked ashen
as we walked by, her gaze begging for an answer, too. I just wished
I could illuminate things for her. Honestly didn’t have a clue what
I’d done this time. We got back to my office and she closed the
door behind us. “What were you possibly thinking? Or was actual
cogent thought a part of your process?”

“
This might be easier if I
knew exactly what you were chewing me out about,” I
said.

“
Have you made any more
grievous errors lately that you’re blissfully unaware
of?”

“
Ma’am, it seems lately I’ve
been making them all the time.”

“
I’m talking about Grover.
What did you do, confront him with what I’d told you?”

“
I went by to see him. That
was your suggestion, wasn’t it?”

She fought to control her temper, and after
a few moments, she said, “Harrison, it should have been handled
delicately. You’ve done more than jeopardize your chance to eat the
best barbeque around here. You’ve put me in a tenuous position with
the man at exactly the wrong time.”

“
Wait a second,” I said. “I
never mentioned your name. In fact I made it a point not
to.”

She picked up a candle-shaped letter opener
from my desk. It had been Belle’s, and I liked the look and heft to
it. What was she going to do with it though? As angry as she was
with me, I was half-afraid she was going to skewer me with it.

“
Do you honestly believe
that in a town as small as Micah’s Ridge that it’s possible for any
visits here to go unnoticed? I daresay everyone in town knows about
our candlemaking lessons. Honestly, how hard do you think it was
for Grover to decipher where you got your information?”

“
I’m sorry, Mrs. Jorgenson,
but I honestly didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She frowned, then said, “Of course you
didn’t but the damage has been done nonetheless. The question is,
what do we do about it now?”

“
I’ll go apologize again,
but I doubt it will do any good.”

“
Harrison, we need to pay
him a visit together, and I mean right now.”

“
You’re coming, too?” I
asked. It reminded me uneasily of the time as a child I’d taken a
candy bar from the store without bothering to pay for it. My mother
had marched me back there and lorded over my full confession. I’d
learned that lesson well enough, and my criminal act was never
repeated.

“
Of course I’m coming,” she
said. ‘This is too important to leave in your hands.”

“
Gee thanks. Your confidence
in me is overwhelming.”

That brought the hint of a smile to her
face. “Harrison, you’re a wonderful teacher and a skilled
candlemaker, but I’m afraid you’re out of your league on this one.
Let’s go.”

“
Do you honestly mean at
this very moment?”

She said, “The sooner we do this, the
better. Let your staff handle the store.”

“
My ‘staff’ has been
covering for me most of the last week.”

Mrs. Jorgenson said, “And if she hopes to
have place to work, she’ll continue to do so.”

I followed her out of the office and called
out to Eve, “I’ll be back.”

She managed to nod, but the worried
expression her face spoke volumes. I wasn’t too pleased with way
things were working out either.

We took her car, and as we approached place,
I saw that his red T-shirt signal was out on the bush. I said,
“This won’t work, there will be lots of people around.”

“
Trust me,
Harrison.”

I thought it was a bad move, but then my own
ideas hadn’t been all that hot lately, either. I followed Mrs.
Jorgenson as if I were on a leash. There was a smattering of
customers sitting at their tables, and I wondered how word managed
to spread so quickly that Grover was serving barbeque.

He stared holes through me as I approached.
Before Mrs. Jorgenson could say a word, Grover snapped, “He’s not
welcome here.”

“
He’s with me,” Mrs.
Jorgenson said.

“
You’re not bulletproof
yourself, you know that don’t you?”

She frowned. “Why are you being so difficult
about this?”

I felt like grabbing her arm and shaking
her. If this was Mrs. Jorgenson’s idea of an apology, she could
take a lesson or two from me.

“
I won’t discuss it. Not in
front of him.”

Mrs. Jorgenson turned to me. “Wait for me by
the car.”

I nodded, then said to Grover, “I really am
sorry.”

He didn’t acknowledge my apology, though I
hadn’t expected him to. As I walked back to Mrs. Jorgenson’s car, I
noticed that not a soul there was willing to make eye contact with
me. I suddenly knew how a pariah felt

Mrs. Jorgenson was track in less than five
minutes, and from the expression on her face, she hadn’t had any
more luck than I had.

“
Of ail the unmitigated
nerve, that man actually banished me from coming back. I still
can’t believe it”

“
I’m sorry I got you into
this mess,” I said.

“
Never mind, Harrison, this
isn’t about you anymore. If Grover Blake thinks he can treat me
like that, he’s sadly mistaken. I won’t tolerate it.”

“
But what can you
do?”

“
More than he realizes,” she
said tightly, and I was glad I wasn’t in Grover’s position. I
wasn’t sure what Mrs. Jorgenson’s next move was going to be, but I
knew it would most likely be unpleasant for Grover.

She dropped me back at River’s Edge with
barely a nod, and I went inside At Wick’s End, my head hung low.
Somehow I’d managed to make things even worse. What else could go
wrong?

Unfortunately, I didn’t have long to find
out

Chapter 18

Gary Cragg stormed into the candleshop, with
Sanora right on his heels. “Harrison, we’ve got a serious
problem.”

Sanora added, “They’re getting ready to
bulldoze the woods beside us.”

“
What? That can’t
be.”

“
Then how else do you
explain four bulldozers unloading next door?” Sanora said. “I’ve
seen this before. They won’t wait for a permit. They’ll go ahead
and knock all the trees down, then pay the fines. We’ve got to stop
them!”

“
Hang on a second,” I said.
“I want to call Ruth Nash.”

Sanora said, “There’s no time for that.
We’ve got to move on this now.”

Then give me a chance to do something,” I
said as I grabbed the telephone. I looked up the number for the
hospital, and five minutes later I was talking to Ruth.

“
Did you know that they’re
getting ready to demolish the trees beside River’s Edge?” I
asked.

“
On Walters land? I don’t
think so.”

“
I can hear the dozers
rumbling from here. Ask Cyrus if he sold that land to Runion, or
anybody else for that matter.”

“
If he did sell it to that
scoundrel, he was under some kind of undue influence. They’ve found
drugs in Cyrus’s system designed to make him weaker every day.
Thank God you called me when you did.”

“
I’m glad for you, but what
do I do about this?”

She barely hesitated, then said, “Stall them
for as long as you can. I’ll get a lawyer on this immediately.”

“
I have one standing right
here with me, if you’d like to speak with him.”

“
Is he any good?”

“
I’d hate to go up against
him,” I said simply.

“
Put him on.”

Cragg had a hurried conversation with Ruth,
Sanora growing more and more impatient by the second.

Heather burst into the candle shop. She was
so upset, she barely missed a beat when she saw Sanora standing
beside me. “Harrison, what’s going on?”

“
That’s what we’re trying to
find out”

She didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t
leave, either. Cragg whispered again, then hung up. “It’s obviously
I a duplicitous move on Runion’s part There shouldn’t be any
problem getting an injunction to stop it”

“
We don’t have time for
that, Gary,” Sanora said. It was clear why Cragg was so interested
in the environment all of a sudden: his crush on Sanora was quite
obvious, and what’s more, she knew it, and was using it to her
advantage.

Heather said, “I’ve got the chains we used
to protest when they razed the old theater downtown.”

Sanora looked at Heather and said, “You were
a part of that?”

“
I want to preserve what
we’ve got, not pave over it,” Heather said snippily.

“
I wasn’t criticizing, I’m
impressed,” Sanora said.

Heather didn’t know how to take that “Hang
on, I’ll be right back.”

Two minutes later she showed up with a hefty
length of chain and a padlock. “I’m going to chain myself to the
biggest tree I can find so they can’t do anything.”

Cragg said, “I don’t recommend it. Let me
handle this the legal way.”

Sanora said, “We don’t have time for that.
You go do your paperwork and we’ll hold them off as long as we
can.”

“
We?” Heather asked
abruptly.

Sanora smiled. “You don’t think you’re going
to have all the fun, do you?”

“
I thought you were all for
development” I said.

“
Not like this,” Sanora
said. “This is where we need to take a stand.”

I made up my mind in an instant “Wait a
second. I’m going with you, too.”

Eve, who had remained silent through the
discussion, piped up. “Harrison, this isn’t the kind of publicity
we need. You can’t afford to offend our customers by being
arrested.”

“
They’ll just have to live
with it,” I said. “I’m doing this for Cyrus, too.”

Cragg drove off to the courthouse while
Heather, Sanora and I raced through the woods toward the sound of
the bulldozers.

“
I hope we’re in time,”
Sanora said.

“
We’ve got to be,” Heather
answered.

We came into the clearing and stopped behind
a giant oak that would be the first tree that had to come down. A
crew was unloading the last bulldozer from a massive flatbed truck.
Heather said, “We’re just in time. ^ Take this end, Harrison.”

We circled the tree, putting our bodies
inside the loop of steel. Nobody noticed us as we faced the heavy
equipment, and once the lock was snapped in place, we stood waiting
for someone to see our protest I tried yelling at the workers to
get their attention, but the bulldozers were making too much
noise.

The first monster started lumbering toward
us, and for a second I didn’t think he was going to see us in time
to stop. Heather and Sanora joined me as I screamed at him, waving
my arms to try to capture the driver’s attention. I was silently
glad Heather had done this before. What a nightmare it would have
been if we hadn’t pulled our arms out before attaching the
chains.

I could smell the dozer’s diesel breath when
the operator finally spotted us. He shut off the engine, and a man
in a hard hat raced toward him. “Johnson, what do you think you’re
doing?”

He pointed to us in disgust, and the foreman
turned I to the other operators and made a killing gesture with his
hand at his throat.

The woods were suddenly filled with an
echoing silence.

“
What do you clowns think
you’re doing?” he shouted as he stormed toward us.

“
We’re saving the woods,” I
said.

“
What you’re doing is
delaying me, and I hate to be delayed. Unlock that chain and get
out of the way.”

Heather said, “Sorry, we didn’t bring the
key with us. We’re waiting for an injunction to stop you.”

That’s not going to happen, lady. You’d
better hope you find the key.”

“
We’re not leaving,” I
said.

“
We’ll see about
that”

He turned to the man on the nearest
bulldozer and said, “Run them down.”

The operator looked at him like he was
insane. “Come on, Mr. Kirk, you know I can’t do that.”

“
Then get out of the seat so
I can. They’re here illegally, and I’m sick of these tree-huggers
trying to stop every job we take on.”

The operator climbed out of the seat and
Kirk took hit place. This is your last chance to unlock yourselves
and go home like good little boys and girls.”

“
We can’t” I said, a little
too loudly in the quiet round us. “She told you, we don’t have the
key.”

“
Then I suggest you find it
and fast”

He started the dozer up, and I could feel
the ground rumble under us as it approached. The blade looked huge
at it came closer and closer, and I could see chunks of caked dirt
clinging to its steel teeth. At ten feet away, I kept thinking he
was bluffing, but by the time he was within five feet of us, I knew
we were all going to die. The man had a crazed look in his eyes, as
if he’d been waiting his entire career to run somebody over with a
bulldozer. He was less than twenty-four inches torn us when the
dozer stopped and the engine died. I was between Heather and
Sanora, and we’d held hands automatically as the bulldozer had
approached. They’d each squeezed so hard, I wasn’t sure I’d ever
get the feeling back in my hands, even if we somehow managed to
live through the dozer assault.