Almost Dead (Lizzy Gardner #5)(25)

Usually she visited her parents once or twice a month, but for reasons that couldn’t be helped, she hadn’t been to the farm in nearly two months, not counting her midnight jaunt into the field to bury Brandon’s body. That was the reason she’d come tonight. After the recent rains, she couldn’t stop worrying about his body floating up to the top of his makeshift grave.

You better get moving. Brandon’s corpse could be resting in the neighbor’s yard.

“I’m going to take that bucket of scraps to the pigs,” Jenny told her mom.

“No need to do that, dear. Harry will be here to feed all the animals in the morning.”

“That’s OK—I want to do it. I want to see the pigs before I go.”

“You’ll get your nice clothes dirty,” Dad said.

“You both need to stop worrying about every little thing. I’ll go to the barn first and slide into one of Dad’s old painting garments before I head for the pen.” She looked at Mom. “Do you mind finishing up the dishes by yourself?”

“Not at all. You go have fun with the pigs. Rosa is about to have her litter any minute now. Oh,” she said before Jenny got to the door, “watch out for the new boar. He’s eight hundred pounds and mean as they come.”

“A boar? Why do we have a boar?”

“Mr. Higgins is moving away soon, and he knew how much your dad always liked the big boar, so he gave it to him. Maybe you should go say hello to Jack before he moves on to greener pastures. He’s always been fond of you, you know. Talks about you as if you were his own daughter. Such a sweet man.”

About as sweet as a bite of sour apple with a squirt of lemon juice, Jenny thought but kept it to herself. The last person in the world she wanted to talk to or think about was the next-door neighbor. Mr. Jack Higgins was rotten to the core. Of course, Mom had no idea of the things he’d done to sabotage Jenny’s relationship with his eldest son, Bobby. As it turned out, Mr. Higgins had had big plans for Bobby, and those plans had not included Jenny Pickett.

Without another word, Jenny grabbed the bucket of slop and headed outside.

Inside the barn, she made quick work of stepping into overalls and a pair of rubber boots, grabbed a flashlight, and then headed out to the field. Figuring Mom might be watching from the kitchen window, she held the bucket of scraps high in one hand as she headed for the pigpen. As soon as she rounded the corner, though, she set the bucket down and ran toward the place where she’d buried Brandon.

After scouring the muddy fields for a while, she’d just decided she might be in the clear when she tripped over a half-eaten foot and nearly face-planted in the mud.

Damn. Could have been coyotes or raccoons—or maybe her dad’s new prize boar. In fact, that was pretty damned likely. She passed the flashlight’s beam around the field. Its batteries were fading. She couldn’t help but wonder if the old boar was watching her.

She hurried back for the barn and tossed a shovel and an axe in the wheelbarrow. Before she got halfway across the twelve-hundred-square-foot barn, though, Mr. Higgins, stepped inside and even went to all the bother to slide the creaky metal door closed behind him. “Well, well. If it ain’t the one and only Jenny Pickett. How ya doin’, pretty gal?”

“I’m busy right now, Mr. Higgins, and I really don’t have time for small talk.”

His eyes opened wide. “Jenny Pickett has gone and grown a voice. Ain’t that a kicker?”

His scrutiny of her felt heavy as a wet blanket on her shoulders, just as it used to feel when she was younger and he stared at her like he was doing now. His gaze rested somewhere close to her thighs before working upward to her bosom.

She felt exposed.

She didn’t like it.

Leaving the wheelbarrow, Jenny walked to the back of the barn, grabbed an empty bucket, and started to fill it with grain, anything to get his prying, ugly eyes off her.

“I’m sure you saw it in the paper,” Mr. Higgins began. “My Bobby went and married himself a pretty girl named Jenny. Ain’t that a coincidence? You remember her. Jenny Rowe. Voted most popular girl in your class. Then she won all sorts of awards in college.”

Jenny gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted was to make a scene at her parents’ house. “I can’t imagine why you would think I would care, other than to thank my lucky stars I didn’t get stuck with Bobby myself,” she told him, unable to stop herself. “Everybody knows about poor Jenny Rowe, and I mean everyone. For years after college, she couldn’t get a job and she had to give massages to men she’d never met just to keep a roof over her head and food on the table. And I’m not talking about foot massages, Mr. Higgins. I’m talking about the kind of massages that include a happy ending. Poor sad Jenny must have been pretty desperate to go and marry big ol’ Bobby.”

Jack Higgins’s round, droopy-jowled face paled. “You, you—”

“Jesus Christ, Mr. Higgins. Get a clue. Your son weighs at least four hundred pounds and he can’t lift a fork to his mouth without sweating. Does he have a job? A house? How the hell is he going to f*ck that new wife of his if he can’t find his penis?”

Higgins pointed a fat, stubby finger at her. “You better watch that mouth of yours. Your father is lucky he has dementia because he would not be happy to know what’s become of his only daughter.”