Below the Tree Line Page 17

  Her dad’s face softened. “I trust you, Lissie. I’ve given you everything I had to give. I taught you everything I had to teach. I trust you.” He reached out and patted her hand, then reached down and gave the same pat to Shadow. “He’s growing into himself, isn’t he?”

  After leaving Pasquanata, Felicity drove to Flat Road Automotive. It wasn’t on her way home, but she was curious to know what had happened with Clarissa Jenkins’s car. She found Bruce at the back of the garage. When he saw her, he walked to the front of the empty bay.

  “My truck’s fine at the moment,” she told him when he asked her what the trouble was. “I got a speeding warning yesterday.”

  “That’s not a bad thing,” he said, turning to look at the blue pickup over his shoulder. “It’s better if you get out on the highway and open it up once in a while. Vehicles start to fall apart if you let them sit in the driveway or only drive them around town at low speeds.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m stopped. I’ll tell the trooper it’s my mechanic’s fault.”

  “Okay, no work necessary. So what’s up?”

  “I noticed that you don’t have Clarissa Jenkins’s car here anymore.” She looked around her.

  Bruce shook his head and led the way into the office. As often as Felicity had brought in her pickup for work, she’d never wanted to stay long enough to sit on what passed for a couch or any of the wooden chairs. They were simply too dirty for her. She wondered if anyone sat there while they waited, or if everyone did what she did—told Bruce to return the vehicle to her house or call her over at the cafe when he was ready.

  “You don’t look very happy, Bruce.”

  “I wonder why.” He shrugged and dropped the rag he’d been carrying onto the counter, which he stepped behind. He hit a key on the computer, checked a couple of messages, and then turned to her, muttering mostly to himself. “Kevin said they could take it, so they did.” He fell into the chair. “I am so frigging—” He glanced at her and skipped the end of the sentence.

  “I hope you’re not out a lot of money.”

  “Money and time. Mostly time.” He looked around the small space. “Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “You couldn’t have done that.”

  “I dunno. I never expected this.”

  “Did Kevin say anything?”

  “I suppose he’ll tell you.” Bruce leaned back and looked up at her. “Want a Coke?” She shook her head as he reached down to a small cooler below the counter and pulled out a well-known red can. He popped the lid and poured some down his throat.

  “I don’t think I’m going to like what you’re going to tell me.”

  He lowered his eyes as if ashamed of what he had to say. “Anyone could have walked in and done whatever they wanted to the car. I have no security, as Kevin pointed out to me with every other breath he took.”

  Felicity winced.

  “Kevin thinks they can estimate when the lines were opened and maybe even where—out there.” He tipped his head toward the parking area. “He’s pretty sure it’ll show it happened right here, early in the morning.”

  “You mean, just before she picked up her car?”

  “Yeah. So he wants to know who was here. And do I have a camera on the premises?”

  “Do you?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “How about the gas station, or Hogie?”

  “Hogie? Are you effing kidding me? I’m sorry, Felicity. But this is a bitch. Forget Hogie and his junk cars. Hogie has maybe two decent cars to rent and I never know if they’re here or not. Sometimes it looks like he leaves his wife’s car and sometimes it’s another car I’ve never seen before, and sometimes he has a regular company rental car, like Hertz or Avis or Enterprise. I don’t know where he gets his cars. I mean, I know he buys them in New Hampshire at the auto sales, but really, I never know if a strange car is his or someone else’s.”

  “Kevin really got to you.”

  “He said I could be liable, not offering reasonable care for someone else’s property,” Bruce said, lowering his voice. “And the family could sue.”

  “Oh no.” Felicity took an involuntary step back.

  Seventeen

  Felicity hung up the dishtowel and wiped down the kitchen table with a sponge. It had been a long but mostly satisfying day. Chief Kevin Algren’s advice on how she could respond to her financial problems with Pasquanata Community Home had elicited what she could only call an improved attitude on the part of the manager when they’d talked after her visit with her dad earlier in the day. It was remarkable what a strategic call to a state agency could accomplish.

  Even so, the Pasquanata manager’s monetary request had shown Felicity just how vulnerable she was. If she was vulnerable to people like the nursing home manager, a slick land buyer could be dangerous. It was time to arm herself with information if not cash. She sat down at the kitchen table and opened her laptop. By her right hand a mug of steaming green tea promised to soothe her jangled nerves, depending on what she found. And if that didn’t work, Miss Anthropy was ready with a quiet purr and a warm body. The cat jumped onto her lap and settled down.

  She knew the name of the man who had proposed buying first Jeremy Colson’s farm and then Tall Tree Farm. But that was all she knew, and since it wasn’t a particularly distinctive name, she guessed she might end up finding a few hundred people called Franklin M. Gentile. But at least she might be able to whittle the list down and then pry more information out of Marilyn. She typed in the name, hit return, and waited.

  To her surprise, instead of seeing a list of hundreds of people with both or one of the names, she faced a list of perhaps five or six people. She typed in the full name again—first middle last—in quotes, and this time the search engine listed three results. So, Franklin M. Gentile wasn’t as common a name as she’d thought. She went down the list, clicking on links for all three.

  The first Franklin M. Gentile lived in Portland, Oregon, and sold insurance linked to extreme sports. She thought he looked the part—muscular, shaved head, robust features, and a mountain bike mounted on a dusty Jeep. His life seemed to revolve around the high desert country. The quiet life Mr. Gentile said he wanted, however, would have been anathema to this Mr. Gentile. She checked him off as unlikely.

  The second Franklin M. Gentile was fourteen years old, lived with his parents in a suburb of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and wanted to be a designer of video games. He’d already produced a few for his friends, and Felicity declined to follow a link to appreciate his prowess on the screen. She checked him off as unlikely to be Marilyn Kvorak’s client.

  The third and last Franklin M. Gentile was a retired science teacher from Bangor, Maine, without wife and child as far as Felicity could see. She squinted at his photograph, which smiled back at her. The picture was fuzzy, but to the extent she could make out a face, he in fact looked like a science teacher: serious but approachable, someone the kids could trust and talk to about their problems. And it was difficult to tell for sure if he was the man she’d seen—fleetingly—in Town Hall.

  Mr. Gentile had several awards to his credit and had continued to teach until his very last day, declining early retirement, buyouts, or anything else that might pull him out of the classroom. He was now tutoring students for college exams and AP courses. His only other interest was fresh water and ocean kayaking, for which he wore a helmet. Felicity couldn’t help smiling at the image of him in his headgear. He was definitely a dork.

  It was possible this was the same man she’d seen from a distance in Town Hall, his appearance altered by the light or camera or something else. But even so, where would Mr. Gentile of Bangor, Maine, get all that money to buy out Jeremy or herself? She buried her fingers in the warm fur of Miss Anthropy.

  Felicity pushed aside the mug of tea, now growing tepid, and spread out her map of the
area. She studied the boundaries of her farm, north to south, west to east. If she were a stranger, coming in from outside, what would make her stop and look at this part of the state?

  The offer made through Marilyn had been in the seven figures. At first Felicity had found it offensive, as though the only thing necessary to make anyone part with land held for generations was money. Certainly there were those who would be glad to sell a farm that barely paid its way. Seven figures, even high six figures, could change a person’s life. It could mean the difference between a family living in poverty or near it to a family moving into the middle class and paying for college educations for the next three generations to make sure the family stayed in it. Felicity stood up, dumping Miss Anthropy from her lap, and leaned over the table, studying her land, Jeremy’s land, and a few other properties in the area.

  She ran her finger over the plot lines, imagining the landscape at each section, recalling the experiences of walking through this part or another, the rocky landscape, the fallen trees, the places that would yield good timber, and the animal tracks. She was kind of glad to have found a bobcat on her land, though she hoped she’d never meet it face to face. Though reportedly shy, bobcats, like any wild animal, could surprise humans with their unpredictable behavior.

  Miss Anthropy mewed, and Felicity looked down at her standing by the chair. Yes, she thought, I insulted you. She folded up the map and sat down, letting the cat jump onto her lap again. Shadow inched closer, his snout resting between his paws, his eyes fastened to the cat. The cat ignored him.

  The old hand-wound clock struck nine, the spring grinding so loudly that Felicity wondered if it would last another day, let alone another week or year. She’d have to fix it when she had time. But right now she wanted one more look at the only likely candidate for her Franklin M. Gentile. She typed in his name and waited, then began searching through links to learn more about the science teacher. There wasn’t much.

  She found a photograph of him setting off on a group ocean-kayaking trip along the Maine coast, and another of him leading a group of students for an annual walk to clean up litter. She increased the size of the photographs but all she got was more of the helmets. He seemed to like helmets. After a little more digging, she found a single photo of him without one, as a graduate student looking studious and, yes, dorky. Still, he sounded like a reasonable fellow, and if a clean environment was important to him, she could understand why he might want to live in an out-of-the-way place. She understood that. And yet …

  It wasn’t unheard of for a quiet, unmarried man or woman to work diligently at a job and squirrel away money, investing it wisely and building up a large portfolio. Felicity could imagine Mr. Gentile doing that, recognizing the bonanza that lay hidden in start-up biotechnology companies or perhaps in the stories his students told him after they graduated and returned home to visit family and friends. Perhaps an especially bright student had founded one of the great research labs making fantastic discoveries and piles of money. And perhaps Mr. Gentile had been an early investor. Perhaps.

  Felicity leaned back in her chair and watched the blinking cursor. And perhaps, she thought, Mr. Gentile is just trying to reel us in before … before what? Before his partner carries out his side of the scam? Before he slips in and steals what Kyle has found at long last? Before he pulls a legal fast one, cheating her out of her property? Those seven figure offers were just too good to be true.

  Some time after midnight, Felicity awoke to the sound of an animal whining. She thought about this for a while, as the awareness grew in her consciousness. She could see through her one uncovered eye that daylight had not yet arrived, nor had the moon risen enough to filter light through the trees and into her bedroom. She rolled over onto her back and listened. She sat up and looked around. No Shadow. God, had she left the dog outside?

  Felicity threw off the covers and ran down the stairs in a jersey, pajama pants, and bare feet. At the bottom she saw the dog, circling around the living room, going from window to window but not jumping up to look out.

  She walked from window to window on the first floor. The new motion detector lights at the back of the house hadn’t gone on, but those on the barn had. Resigned as well as nervous, Felicity slipped on her boots and hung a flashlight around her neck. She opened the cabinet and lifted out the shotgun. Whatever it was, she might as well scare it or him off before all the animals grew too agitated to go back to sleep. She flicked on the outside lights and again saw the motion detector on the barn blink on and then off. She opened the door and stepped onto the low front porch. The breeze was negligible.

  Ever since she’d driven off the intruder almost two weeks ago, her nights had been quiet, with no sign of any unwanted guests. Felicity had begun to think she’d made her point, to man or beast, and her farm would be left alone. But she’d been wrong. Kevin had warned her, and she’d ignored him beyond putting up more motion detectors. She hated to admit now that he’d been right.

  In the chill, she could hear a little mewling coming from the barn and headed for it. She didn’t have to go far before she sensed she was not alone. Just as she stepped to the far corner of the barn, the motion detector came on, and she caught the swish of an animal moving into the shrubbery. Coyotes would have made less noise, and she would probably have caught more eyes in the woods shining back at her. It sounded like the bobcat had come calling, not for sheep but for barn mice.

  Felicity lowered her weapon and moved closer. But there was nothing to see or smell. She wasn’t even sure which direction to aim in. It might be a false alarm. Perhaps. But after her near encounter before, she wasn’t going to make any assumptions. She circled the barn and house but saw no sign that anyone had returned to finish the job they’d started almost two weeks ago. The sheep grew calm, and Felicity, after a moment’s hesitation, went back into the house. She returned the shotgun to the cabinet and locked it, but didn’t unload the weapon.

  Eighteen

  Of all the things Felicity enjoyed, thinking up recipes was not one of them. Whenever she went to a community event, she tortured herself over what to bring. If the hosts had asked her to bring tools and help fix something or paint a room, she’d be there early and stay late. But instead, she was expected to bring a dish to share, and this sent her into a blue funk.

  She had a standard dish to take to potluck dinners, usually a simple salad or dessert, but after a while even she grew tired of her offerings and tried to think up something new. Today was one of those days when her brain couldn’t get beyond potato salad or garden salad or gingerbread or sugar cookies. In an act of desperation she pulled out a cookbook, opened it, and poked her finger onto the page. The recipe beneath her index finger was pasta, cheese, and tomato pie. She hadn’t tried that before, but she was desperate for something new. She would make it for Jeremy and Taylor’s party this afternoon, a leisurely Sunday gathering.

  If she were being scrupulously honest with herself, Felicity would admit there was more riding on the afternoon than a simple get-together with family and friends. Taylor had arrived on Friday for the long weekend with her dad and grandmother, usually a normal event. Of course, Jeremy had said that his daughter wanted to talk, and only later learned she was bringing a few friends with her to meet everyone. And that was not a normal event.

  Felicity put a pot on the stove to boil and began pulling out the ingredients she needed. Shadow sat under the kitchen table watching, ever alert for the prowling Miss Anthropy, and Miss Anthropy sat on her chair beneath the window, ever alert to misbehavior by the other residents.

  Jeremy had been open with her about his plans for the farm, or the lack of them. As soon as Taylor was twenty-one, which was not very far away, he planned to put her name on the deed and offer to turn over the farm to her. She was already his heir in his will, but once her name was included in the deed, she would have a say in the disposition of every aspect of the property. Unspoken between Fe
licity and Jeremy during this quiet conversation late at night, curled under the sheets in Felicity’s bedroom, was the understanding that Jeremy was doing this without having any idea about his daughter’s intentions.

  Taylor knew her dad planned to do this. They had talked about it. Jeremy had laid out the options as clearly as he possibly could: sell the farm, rent the land out to other farmers, divide and sell some and keep some, keep it all and do nothing with it, develop it all. There were, if not endless, certainly a fair number of possibilities. Land was, after all, useful. And no one was making any more of it, except perhaps the Dutch.

  Felicity turned on the oven and greased a pan. After reading the recipe through a few times, she concluded it was a variation on lasagna, and she knew how to make that. Maybe the afternoon would go well after all.

  Cars lined the road in front of the Colson farm. Half a dozen men occupied the porch off the kitchen, their jackets open to the unseasonably warm weather. Felicity recognized Daniel, Jeremy’s younger brother, and stopped to say hello before making her way into the kitchen and depositing her contribution on the dining table.

  “You been busy.” Loretta came up beside her and inhaled the aroma of the still warm dish. “Something new. Looks good.”

  “Quite a crowd. I thought it was mostly family today,” Felicity said.

  “So did I, but Taylor must have called her friends and invited them and their families, so here we all are.” Loretta turned around to gaze at the guests clustered in the living room, and beyond in the kitchen. “I haven’t seen Dan’s kids in ages, months even.”

  “How’s Taylor?” Felicity skirted the issue of Daniel and his family, a sore point with Loretta.

  “Better than ever.” Loretta grinned. She wore an old gored burgundy corduroy skirt, a white silk blouse, and a black sweater. She was more dressed up than Felicity had seen her in some time, with the exception of weddings and funerals, of course.