A Lie for a Lie (2 page)

“Ray has his normal moments. When the girls and I visited last week, he acted like any contented grandfather.”

“Oh, really? He’s taken up bridge? Golf?”

“No reason to. He has his food dehydrator, his weekly paintball skirmishes, his obstacle courses. He and his comrades are building a wall so massive it’s guaranteed to keep out any tank battalion making a wrong turn into rural Indiana. Better yet, if we’re all lucky, it’ll keep the guys in.”

“I can’t believe you take the girls with you.”

Okay, Lucy knows too much about me. My family background does sound like a screwy sequel to
Apocalypse Now
or
Hair
. My father is a burned-out survivalist, and my mother, the much-married flower child Junie Bluebird, traveled the craft festival circuit through my childhood and adolescence with my sisters and me in tow. But nowadays, except for Ray, our little family can almost pass for normal—if no one looks too closely. My sisters, Vel and Sid, are happy and productive, and they visit as often as they can. Junie has settled down right here in Emerald Springs, where she opened her own quilt shop, and joined the Chamber of Commerce. She even—I hope—pays taxes.

I tried to explain our little Indiana getaway. “Deena’s gotten so good on the rifle range, she could keep us in wild game—if we weren’t vegetarians. And considering she’s now officially a teenager, the self-defense tricks Ray taught us will come in handy. Teddy can stalk wild asparagus and make a sourdough bread starter pretty much out of thin air.” I left out the part where Ray had taken one good look and started me on a physical fitness program designed to make sure I can qualify for some underground version of the Army Rangers.

“I’m always surprised when you come back in one piece.”

“For the most part, the guys at the compound are harmless. They aren’t amassing weapons.” I paused. “At least not that I could see.”

Although the off-limits underground bunkers do worry me a tad.

Lucy spotted a space on the other side of the road that was not large enough that a normal person would consider it. She fishtailed between two oncoming cars, and slid into it at an angle, stopping just inches from the trash-strewn drainage ditch. I had to give her credit. The back bumper of her Concorde had neatly cleared the road. I doubt she was on the right side of legal, but I also doubted anybody in authority would care. The cops were probably more concerned with crowd control up ahead.

Lucy flipped off the ignition. “Well, speaking of misfits . . .”

I was glad to change the subject. “I can’t believe a circus bought the old Weilly farm. I
can
believe you made the sale. The other realtors in Emerald Springs must despise you.”

Lucy smiled like a cat. “Oh, they do, they do. And it’s not a circus. I keep telling you. The new owners call themselves Sister Nora’s Inspirational Tent Show. They don’t just entertain, they bring people to the Lord.”

Somebody should have taught Sister Nora about acronyms, a lesson she apparently hadn’t learned at Tent Revival University. I said it out loud and managed not to smile. “SNITS. Which is what the city council is having, I bet. We have an ordinance against setting a mousetrap without a hunting license, but there’s nothing in place to keep exotic animals off this property? Or a religious cult?”

“Ohio doesn’t have any laws against owning exotic animals. The farm is just outside the city limits, and Sadler Township has rules about pigs and cows, but not elephants.” Lucy shook back her copper curls, then decided that wasn’t good enough. She fished for an elastic band in her purse and scrunched her hair into a springy ponytail. I could relate. We were about to launch ourselves into the heat. Outside the safety and security of the Concorde’s efficient air-conditioner, the sun was unrelenting. June in central Ohio can be hot and humid, but this June was setting records. And nobody was sure where the humidity came from, since it hadn’t rained in Emerald Springs for almost three months.

Before leaving home I’d done the ponytail thing myself, although the majority of my dark hair had already slipped out and was waving limply against my cheeks and nape. Chastened by Lucy’s good example, I tried for renewed order.

“I can’t believe the girls aren’t here to go with us,” I said. My daughters, Deena and Teddy, were off with my mother camping in Junie’s motor home. With her new quilt shop doing a tidy business, Junie has finally found assistants capable of keeping things going for a few days when she’s away. As soon as we’d gotten back from Indiana, she and my girls had gone off for a fling to a nearby lake. Before I’d had time to unpack my own stuff, Lucy had kidnapped me to bring me here.

“Just remember all the details, so you’ll have a great story to tell them,” Lucy said. “And quit stalling.”

I opened my door and nearly succumbed to the first fiery burst. The air was as still as a meditating monk. Maybe a breeze would have been cooling, or maybe it would simply have swept more heat in our direction. Having accompanied Junie through deserts and swamps during my checkered childhood, I’d certainly experienced worse. But despite Ray’s exercise plan, I was still too soft these days, unrepentantly opposed to sunstroke and heat prostration.

I caught up with Lucy, who looked comfortable enough, even though sun plays havoc with the complexions of green-eyed redheads. I decided a new freckle or two wouldn’t be amiss. Lucy’s cute enough to turn the head of every male who comes within ten yards of her. Extra freckles might weed out the ne’er-do-wells from the potential husbands.

Marrying off Lucy is something of a change of pace for me, but in the last year I’ve realized I need a
new
avocation, since my old one—solving murders—comes with a nasty downside of potential victimhood. Now, to stay busy, I’m planning to find Lucy an acceptable man, so I can become godmother to red-haired bouncing babies. Of course Lucy’s Jewish, so I’m not sure about the godmother thing, but there has to be something equivalent.

Of course I have, as yet, not mentioned this to her.

We weren’t the only ones hiking down the road to see Emerald Springs’s latest sideshow. With zombielike determination, family groups, teenagers, old couples arm in arm were staggering toward the acres that were slowly filling with tractor trailers, RVs sprouting satellite dishes, and cages on flatbed trucks.

I caught up to Lucy. “Don’t the animal rights folks make a fuss about the way these animals are transported?”

“I’ve done a little research. Sister Nora’s fielded a few crackpot complaints, professional grousers who don’t think any animals, even well-cared-for ones, should be in captivity. No circuses, zoos, rodeos. Nada. But it seems to me those complaints have been more public relations than serious lawsuits. No authority has ever cited the show. When they were still a circus, they had a sterling reputation.”

Sterling
seemed like the wrong word. Nothing about the procession of dilapidated vehicles looked shiny or valuable. Battered cutlery was more like it. The kind you toss in the picnic basket because it doesn’t matter if somebody throws away a knife or a spoon with the chicken bones. The circus—whoops, the inspirational tent show—looked like it was subsisting on its last dime. I wondered how Sister Nora could afford to feed the two elephants waving their trunks in the distance. And meat for the big cats? I shuddered. Did they intend to raise it here?

“How on earth did they afford this land?” I asked Lucy. “There must be what, eighty acres?”

“Ninety, but after the owner died, the place was abandoned for most of a year. The heirs didn’t want to work with a realtor, so every once in a while they advertised it for way too much, with no takers. The land’s okay, but the house is so run-down I wouldn’t even consider it for one of our flips.”

Lucy and I flip houses as a team. She finds likely prospects that don’t need extensive renovation, and together we do the work. So far we’ve managed three. Now we’re looking for a fourth project, something fast and easy to sink our not-so-massive profits into. So far neither of us had been thrilled with the possibilities. Or maybe the prospect of scraping and prying and carrying out truckloads of garbage when the temperatures are so fierce is the roadblock.

“I’m not sure a farmhouse would be a good flip anyway,” I said as we drew closer. “Any farmer worth his salt would pay less and do the repairs himself. And nobody would want this place for a summer cottage. Horseshoe Bend isn’t the prettiest country road I’ve ever seen. More Heartbreak Hollow than East Hampton.”

“Which is perfect for Sister Nora, since none of the neighbors are going to have the cash to kick her off her land or the clout to get the authorities to do it. They’ll leave her alone. If an animal gets out and bothers somebody, they’ll shoot it.”

I winced.

We were nearing the gate into the property now, which was wide-open for the trucks and RVs. Lucy kept moving.

“As to how they paid for it?” Lucy smiled at me and wiggled her brows. “Aren’t you glad you know me?”

Actually I was. Thrilled, in fact, since my friendship and partnership with Lucy was one of the reasons I had come to terms with living in a town where “change” was something you threw in the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas.

“How did they pay?” I prompted.

“She converted a multimillionaire.”

“She? Sister Nora?”

“The one and only. He paid for the farm in cash. A little, wizened dude named Henry Cinch. We might spot him. Look for the old guy with the bald head.”

“That’s pretty general.”

“No, his bald head is counterintuitive. He has all his hair on top, and none around the edges. Anyway Henry made his money in Texas. Apparently a lot of it. Now he’s getting rid of it as fast as he can.”

“Most likely it’s that New Testament teaching about rich men, heaven, and the eye of a needle. I mean, if he thinks his end is near enough, he’ll want to spend his ill-gotten gains on good things pretty quickly.”

“Does it work that way? You can live any way you want, then repent at the last minute?”

I ignored the theological challenge, since answering big questions is my husband’s bailiwick. “It sounds like he’s doing more than repent. He’s divesting. I wonder if they’ll use some of his money to fix up the house.”

“They’ll sure have the labor to do it.”

About that, Lucy was right. Even if none of the RVs held tiny, munchkin families sleeping six to a bed, enough vehicles had gone through the gate to indicate that at least a hundred people were connected to SNITS. Probably a good many more.

The crowd was gathering just outside the gate. There was no chance of a riot. Midwesterners are far too polite, too orderly, to push their way onto private property. We’re not, however, too polite to gather and stare. We’re also, as a species, prone to keen interest in anything that smacks of the strange or illicit. I wasn’t sure which category Sister Nora and her crew might fall into, but I was anxious to find out.

Lucy walked around the edges of the gathering mob, waited for another truck to pass, then minced her way across the cattle guard that ran parallel to the fence. With an apologetic glance at the people who were watching us, I followed just in front of an approaching RV, nearly sprawling head-first when I caught a toe between steel pipes.

I caught up to her. “Luce, if we were going in, why didn’t we just drive? Why all the parking nonsense?”

“Because I figured we’d make better time on foot than lining up with the other vehicles. I have a couple of documents for Sister Nora.”

I grasped her shoulder and held her in place. “Lucy?”

She shrugged it off. “Okay, just Welcome Wagon stuff and information about county trash pickup. But I wanted to see this up close, didn’t you?”

We walked farther into the melee, and there was, indeed, a lot to see. Scruffy men clad—at most—in tank tops and cutoffs were directing the vehicles into roped-off areas. Ten yards from where we stopped, a bare-chested giant with a narrow head and stevedore shoulders was pounding metal stakes into the ground with a sledgehammer. A much smaller sidekick walked along beside him carrying the stakes. Four muscular women just beyond us were unloading a van filled with picnic tables that had to weigh several hundred pounds each. Two men on the ground were setting them into some kind of frame on wheels and carting them in the direction of the man with the stakes.

“Cookhouse,” one of the men said as he passed, nodding in that direction.

He had answered my unspoken question. No one seemed annoyed we were staring. One of the Amazon women hefting picnic tables even flashed me a warm smile. Everybody seemed to know exactly what to do and how to do it. And from the little I’d seen so far, nobody seemed to mind.

“They seem happy,” I told Lucy. “For what might be a cult.”

“If they offer you Kool-Aid, opt for bottled spring water.”

We continued on our way, past circling wagons and RVs that were cranking up awnings and setting out barbecues. We passed children spilling happily from cars into the unrelenting sunshine; men erecting what looked like a temporary corral for the horses; and horse trailers that smelled pungent and earthy, but not abundantly so.

“They take particularly good care of the horses. As a girl Sister Nora starred in the equestrian act,” Lucy said. “This is what remains of the Nelson-Zimboni Circus.”

“You did all this—you
learned
all this—while I was in Indiana?”

“Well, I had to do something, didn’t I? Other than grieve your absence?”

I poked her in the arm. “Doesn’t it seem,
um
, precipitous to you? I leave for a week, I come back, and we’re watching an inspirational circus move in.”

“Actually, they’ve been looking in our area for a long time. Just a few realtors knew, and we were sworn to secrecy. Then I heard about this place, realized it would be perfect, and talked the owners into listing with me. When Sister Nora saw it, she wanted it fast. I gave her fast. The place was deserted. The tent show had the cash. It was something of a coup, if I do say so myself.”