Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(37)
“Like who? Do you remember?”
“Ah, Marva Green, I think. Wanda Kurtz, for sure. Those two among all her friends were always tight. They used to kid about their names rhyming, and both were close to Mom. They did almost all the food at Dad’s and Mom’s funerals.”
“Wanda—Aaron Kurtz’s wife.”
“Yeah, but we’re talking at least twenty years ago. Sorry I can’t help you more. So, what’s the deal with the scarecrow?”
“Tell you later. You’ve been a big help.”
“Don’t tell me the idiots cooking up meth or getting high on bath salts are bootlegging them in old scarecrows.”
“All right, I won’t tell you that. Thanks, bud. See you,” he said, clapping Grant on the shoulder, and made for the door, already stuffing Mr. Mean back into the paper sacks, top and bottom.
“If it’s that important you have to take off,” Grant called after him, “you owe me a beer somewhere!”
Gabe turned back as he opened the door, and the noise from the mill floor hit him again. It was louder than the rotor wash of a helicopter. “I may owe you more than that.”
As he went down the stairs, he saw Ann’s two other brothers staring at him from the catwalk across the big-toothed circular saw as it ripped into a huge log.
*
Tess drove directly from the Here Ye compound toward Aaron Kurtz’s farm. She did not see or hear the big reaper in the surrounding fields, though Aaron owned or leased land far and wide, so he might be elsewhere. Perhaps Ann’s pointed suggestion that Tess should sell her land to Aaron wasn’t such a bad idea.
Tess was hoping the big-time farmer had gone home for a late lunch or early dinner. She passed fields he’d harvested, the cornstalks slashed low to the ground, leaving only stubble. As much as she didn’t want to hear or see the big machine near her house, she wished those fields could be cut soon so she could see far out from her windows again, even if that brought Dane Thompson’s pet cemetery into view. The thought of those huge projecting teeth that funneled the rows of corn into the belly of the beast, shooting cobs out into an open truck bed and chaff out the other way, really bothered her. Was she remembering that correctly? Had she somehow memory-merged the reaper’s metal teeth that protruded out the front with Mr. Mean’s toothy grin? Memory merge—it was a term she’d seen skimming through one of the books Miss Etta had left with her.
She drove past the Kurtz driveway, turned around at the next intersection and drove back. Their place had always been so well kept and beautiful. The old white farmhouse sported neat black trim. The big red barn and other back buildings looked freshly painted, and tall twin silos stood like guards over it all. The yard displayed brick-lined flower beds and a spacious stretch of grass before the endless cornfields began. The wide-set property lines were edged by white fences.
Driving slowly, she turned in the paved drive, lined with corn shocks and pumpkins. She did not want to go out to one of those back buildings to see the reaper since they stood so close to the corn. But this had to be done. If Gabe was with her, it would look too official, too fishy. And besides, by asking Aaron if he wanted to buy her land, maybe she could suggest he cut the cornfields surrounding her house soon.
Again, as each time she drove past a farmhouse, even those abandoned and vandalized, lived in by poor people, or palatial like this, she asked herself if she recalled anything about it. The yard, the front of the house, the view—anything. But here, even with all those back buildings, she sensed nothing.
There it was!
The green John Deere harvester sat outside the barn next to a wagon hitched to a tractor. The wagon was full of shelled corn. She recalled it well, although she must have turned it into a monster of nightmares later. She viewed the elevated, glassed-in cab where the driver sat; the huge double wheels with yellow metal hubs; and the eight extensions thrust out in front that went between the rows so the cornstalks and cobs would feed in to be cut and shelled while the stalks were shredded for silage. She could see now why she thought of them as teeth when she was small, but at least she had clearly recalled something from the day she was taken.
She knew for sure that Aaron Kurtz and a machine like this one—or maybe this very one—had been in the field that day. So, had he seen someone or something amiss he had covered up for some reason? She knew he had been questioned about that years ago. Or had he done something he didn’t want known?
“You don’t listen, do you?” came a hard voice behind her. “Or can’t obey orders for your own good.”
She jumped and spun around, expecting Aaron. It was Gabe. Why hadn’t she heard him drive in? She realized then she’d been hearing in her head the sounds of the reaper—this grim reaper—when here it sat, still and quiet.
“There’s no law against my looking at this,” she told Gabe.
“How about trespassing?”
“They wouldn’t press charges—”
“How about impeding an investigation when I told you not to come here alone?”
He took her arm and steered her toward her car.
“Gabe, let go! Your presence will tip him off that something’s wrong.”
“Something is wrong! You are not formally on this case. We don’t know who’s responsible. Someone may get spooked or desperate if you’re running around here and—”