Below the Tree Line Read online

  For most of the time since Clarissa’s death, Felicity had assumed this was a simple matter of poaching. She’d put Kyle down as another version of the treasure hunters who went after frigates sunk during the Revolutionary War, or galleons laden with gold from the New World lost on their way back to Spain. These men and women were fantasists, and perhaps one in a thousand actually found something. And a rare find might include a few old weapons encrusted with barnacles or old coins. But most rational people considered such seeking akin to the proverbial beachcombing, a way to have a fun life without doing any real work. There was nothing wrong with chasing moonbeams, as long as you knew that’s what you were doing and that the odds of catching anything were very bad. But on her land? On Tall Tree Farm?

  Kyle was a fool, but if he was killed for the land, or something on it, then perhaps he wasn’t a fool. Lance only wanted the best timber, even when he was told to back off. But what did that outside buyer want? Who was Franklin M. Gentile, really?

  Felicity started up her truck and turned onto High Street. Just as she prepared to head back to her farm she spotted Marilyn Kvorak standing outside the Morning Glory Cafe, chatting with a tall man with a mustache. Felicity swung her steering wheel and headed downhill, parking several cars behind Marilyn’s Jeep. But before she could get out of the pickup and stop the real estate agent, Marilyn climbed into her Jeep and drove away. The man she’d been talking with walked to his car and also drove off. Felicity scribbled down the license plate number on a scrap of paper and then glanced up as the car rounded a corner and traveled out of sight. Something about the car seemed familiar.

  She headed into the cafe and hopped onto a stool at the counter. “I just saw Marilyn outside.”

  “Yup. Lunch with a client.” Bettes filled a mug with coffee.

  “Tall with a mustache?”

  “Yup, that’s the one.”

  “Francis something?”

  “Francis?” Bettes frowned and lowered the coffee pot. “I don’t think she called him that. Gill?” She walked to the door into the kitchen and stepped a foot or so into the back. “What’s the name of that client Marilyn’s been showing around?” She listened. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “Who is it?” Felicity asked when Bettes returned to the counter.

  “Frank Gentile.”

  “Frank with a Pennsylvania accent.” Felicity left her coffee sitting on the counter.

  “How did you know he had a Pennsylvania accent?”

  “Someone told me.” Felicity turned slightly toward the door, then resettled herself on the stool.

  “I’m getting the feeling that’s not good.” Bettes waited.

  “Does he live around here?”

  “That guy?” Bettes looked through the large front windows as though he were standing outside. “I don’t believe so.”

  “He’s driving a car I think I’ve seen before.”

  “Oh, that.” Bettes waved her hand. “I think that’s one of Hogie’s cars.” She turned around and again called to Gill, who appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Didn’t Hogie tell you he rented a car to some guy looking at property with Marilyn?” Gill nodded.

  “He’s taken it for a few weeks, Hogie said. And he keeps it at Hogie’s place when he’s not around and has to go back to wherever,” Gill said.

  “Pennsylvania,” Felicity said absently.

  “Yeah.” Gill and Bettes glanced at each other. Gill shrugged and went back into the kitchen. Bettes said, “He doesn’t want to drive his own car and put mileage on it, so he flies in and rents.”

  “So he’s not local.” Felicity leaned over her mug and addressed the single swirl and thread of steam. “And he doesn’t look familiar.”

  “Why would he look familiar if you don’t know him?”

  “No reason.” Felicity tried to tell herself she was overreacting, that the few photographs she’d seen of the man listed on the internet as Franklin M. Gentile, the science teacher, were too fuzzy to use to identify anyone, and she’d barely gotten a glimpse of this Frank Gentile at Town Hall. “By the way, do you know if Clarissa Jenkins ever mentioned her fiancé’s name?”

  Once again Bettes walked to the kitchen door and leaned in, calling out her question. She turned to Felicity. “Gill says he heard her talking to him on her cell once and she called him Frank something. Hey, you don’t look so good, Felicity. You all right?”

  Felicity gave herself a little shake. “I’m fine, Bettes.”

  “Is this Frank the same guy?”

  “I don’t know.” She ordered a grilled cheese sandwich to give herself time to think. She needed the comfort of other people, and a hot sandwich was a small price to pay for that.

  “Have you seen Frank Gentile in here before?” she asked.

  “Once or twice, with Marilyn.” Bettes grew interested. “He’s good-looking, isn’t he?”

  Felicity nodded. Con men usually are, she wanted to add, but she still didn’t know what Frank was trying to get out of Zenia or Marilyn or any of the landowners in the area. And if he was also Clarissa’s fiancé, then perhaps he and Kyle were after the same thing, or even in fact working together. “What’s he like?”

  Bettes shrugged. “Charming, good-looking, but once or twice he seemed impatient with Marilyn, like he was pushing her and she wasn’t willing to be pushed.”

  “I see.” Felicity frowned, trying to put these pieces together.

  “You could ask Marilyn about him, but I guess you got other things on your mind, like all the extra money you’ll be making out of town, huh?”

  “Huh? What money?” Felicity jerked her head back.

  “That was snarky. I shouldn’t have said that.” Bettes headed to the cash register, to take the money from a couple who had been seated at a booth by the window.

  “What are you getting at, Bettes?” Felicity asked when she returned.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just meant that you seem to have found a better sawmill for your cutting, the one Lance has decided to use, that’s all.”

  “Where did you get that idea? Who told you that?”

  “Dingel Mantell.” Bettes folded her arms across her chest. “I mean, it’s not really something you can expect to keep secret, at least not for very long. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get the best price you can. We all get that.” She waved her right hand, as though dismissing any expected criticism.

  “Secret? Dingel told you that?”

  “He was in here this morning and mentioned how tough things are getting with sawmills farther out offering better prices, so he has to think about other work. He was just sad at losing someone whose family has been his customer for his entire life.”

  “But he’s not losing me as a customer.” Felicity stood up, her sandwich order forgotten. “Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand him?”

  “Gill was here. He heard it too.” She turned around and called for her husband in the nearly empty cafe. Gill came to the kitchen door, and Bettes repeated Dingel’s statement.

  “That’s what he said,” Gill confirmed. “Dingel figures this cutting will be especially good and Lance got a sawmill lined up with a buyer overseas. That’s usually what’s going on when something like this happens.”

  “I don’t understand,” Felicity said, pulling out a five-dollar bill and slipping it under the edge of her plate. “Lance and I didn’t talk about anything like that. I never heard of changing sawmills because you want an overseas buyer. And I don’t know anything about buyers except Dingel. I always go to Dingel.”

  “It’s more common than you think,” Gill said. “A few years ago all the best plywood was going overseas to Asia for their building boom. Now I hear some mills in New York state are exporting high-grade logs to Europe and Asia. They’re getting good prices.”

  “And then one guy told me all the best meat wa
s going to Japan.” Bettes pursed her lips. “I hear they pay upwards of six hundred dollars a pound for Angus beef.”

  “Now wait a minute.” Felicity held up both hands. “I don’t know about any of that, and I don’t care about it, but if Lance told Dingel we were going to someone else, then Lance made a mistake.” She pulled out her cell and began looking for Lance’s telephone number. “I need to talk to him and get this straightened out.”

  This couldn’t be happening, she muttered as she punched in Lance’s cell number. It was the same as someone stealing the old coin silver spoons right out of her house. If Lance had lined up a sawmill and buyers out of town, he was already way ahead of her, way ahead of anything she’d suspected.

  By the time she reached her pickup, she’d left two messages for Lance that no one could misunderstand: there would be no more cutting until she talked to him face to face. Still, she felt totally exposed, as though all her reasoning and planning and protecting had been nothing more than child’s play. He was expecting to walk off with her timber while she watched with no idea of what she was seeing.

  Twenty-Three

  With a few hours of daylight left before Jeremy was expected, and feeling the need for strenuous physical work to calm herself down, Felicity decided to tackle the failing barn roof. The erratic weather that had meant snow last night meant bright sun today, so ice and snow had melted and it now felt like spring again. If the roof was clear, she could at least assess how much needed to be done, and then plan to work on it when she had more daylight. She carried out a ladder from the barn, propped it against the side, and steadied it.

  Climbing on roofs wasn’t her favorite activity. When the barn had needed a major repair some thirty years ago, her parents had decided to replace the roof with one that was less steep. But instead of the expected metal roof, Walter chose shingles because he could do it himself. Of course, this meant less cost when it came to repairs because everyone could get up on the roof and work on it, even Felicity’s mother, who insisted her work was inside and she would stay there. No one had been able to persuade Walter O’Brien to use a tin roof.

  Once on the roof, Felicity tested each step. She kept her cell phone with her whenever she went down cellar or onto the roof, in case something happened. She knew she would be missed eventually, but eventually could be days, and she could die in a matter of hours from a serious fall.

  Although this barn roof was not as high as the previous one, she nevertheless had an unsettling sensation every time she found herself looking out over her property from on high. Her few cultivated acres, the straggly fencing, and the dirt drive were transformed into a painting of rural life.

  She found the damaged shingles and estimated what she’d need for repairs. The culprit for some of the damage was a low-hanging branch from a tree that had been nothing but a weed fifteen years ago, and now was threatening to take down the barn. She added the tree to the list of those she had to remove sooner rather than later.

  She worked her way to the peak, testing torn and curled shingles, tossing away the loose and damaged ones, watching them fly off into the sky before they wheeled around and fell to earth. When she’d reached the peak she stood, straddling it, and looked out over the countryside. She turned to the west and saw barely a glimmer of the sun sinking behind the trees.

  The barn had been built close to the house, as barns usually were. In earlier centuries, animals were often kept on the first floor of a home, the body heat of a single cow capable of providing enough warmth to comfort a family through a cold winter night. When animals were moved into separate structures, the barn was often linked to the house by an open walkway, allowing the heat to travel into the home. But as living arrangements changed, barns became separated, and Felicity’s grandparents had built their new barn near to but not attached to the farmhouse.

  Felicity did prefer some distance between house and barn, if only for sanitary and olfactory reasons. But as she stood up there she thought about location—location of barns and hunting blinds and camps. Someone had built a blind very near Zeke Bodrun’s old cabin. He might have built it, but as a hunter he would have known it wasn’t an ideal location. Deer would smell humans in the blind, but also from the cabin. She began to wonder just how much a hunter could see from that spot. Could he see enough to make it worthwhile, even though it might not draw enough sport? Had someone built the blind after Zeke died, someone new to the area who didn’t understand hunting, and then just left it after having little success? Had someone built the blind before the cabin, before Zeke, and Zeke just left the structure to fall apart? Felicity sat on the edge of the roof, her legs dangling over the open door.

  The blind on Zeke’s old land sat at least as far off the ground as the roof of the barn, Felicity estimated. But the ground where it sat was higher than the land her barn sat on. She imagined the landscape between here and the cabin, the rise and fall of terrain, the sections timbered recently or years ago. Somewhere in the back of her mind she recalled her dad timbering the northwest corner of the farm, in the direction of Zeke’s cabin.

  Her dad’s insistence on no logging in one section near the bobcat den made her wonder if perhaps he and Zeke Bodrun had agreed not to upset the growth near Zeke’s parcel, to give the old man a place of peace and solitude, a refuge during his final years. But the O’Brien land didn’t extend far enough for that. The plot in question sat almost in the center of her property now, the second piece her dad had purchased serving as a link to his more valuable plots to the north. Moreover, if Zeke had wanted that much solitude, why had he set off on his personal odysseys?

  The sound of Jeremy’s Ford pickup coming down the drive brought Felicity back to the present. She watched him drive up, park, and climb out. He spotted her at once, and waved before reaching into the truck for a sack of groceries.

  “How’s the view up there?” He walked to the front of the barn, looking up at her. “Contemplating the philosophy of farming?”

  “I love it up here.” She pulled off her canvas tool bag and held it over him, waited, and then let it go. He grabbed it. “So what’s for dinner?”

  “Quail. From Loretta’s freezer.”

  After taking a shower and changing into clean jeans and a green sweater, Felicity set the table and made a salad. She poured wine and settled in a chair to watch Jeremy cook. He’d changed out of his work clothes into a clean, well-pressed pair of khaki slacks and a flannel shirt. She appreciated that in him. Despite their multiyear relationship, and his devotion to raising his daughter and maintaining his farm along with his construction business, he’d never treated her like she was third on his list. He never took her for granted. She loved him for that, and other things.

  “I had a thought while I was up on the barn roof.”

  “Thoughts are good.” Jeremy glanced over his shoulder at her and went on sauteing onions.

  “What are you planning on doing with those?”

  “Topping for the rice pilaf.”

  “Who shot the quail?”

  “Loretta. It’s her specialty. She pretends birds are ruining her vegetable garden and goes at it.”

  “She hasn’t had a vegetable garden in years.”

  “But she has a long memory. So tell me about your epiphany on the barn roof.”

  “That sounds like the title of a book. Epiphany on a Barn Roof.” Felicity sipped her wine. “It was about the blind over near Zeke Bodrun’s cabin.”

  “What about it?”

  “Don’t you think it’s awful close to the cabin?”

  Jeremy turned around, holding the wooden spoon poised over the saucepan, and studied her. He turned back to the stove. “Could be. Could be it was built before the cabin, or while the cabin was empty.”

  “Hmm. I suppose so.” But Felicity wasn’t satisfied and continued to sip her wine. “There was something else.”

  “There’s always some
thing else with you.”

  “Now, Jeremy.”

  “That sounds like Loretta.”

  “Well, hear me out.” Felicity sat up straighter in her chair. “When I went into the cabin with you and Pat, I thought it looked lived in. Recently lived in.”

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “But Kevin said the forensics guys found no evidence that Sasha Glover was ever in that cabin.” She rested her elbow on the table, holding up the wine glass. The evening light shimmered through the red liquid and turned the white napkins and tablecloth pink. She played with the light and the glass until she noticed the silence. She looked up to see Jeremy staring at her.

  “You’re stuck on this idea that Sasha was in that cabin just because her great-granddad once owned it.”

  “That’s not the only reason. There was that smell of vomit.”

  “Lissie, it was a freak accident that she happened to die on your land. Whoever poisoned her, and it may have been an accident, isn’t part of your land problems with Kyle or whoever was walking on your land after the snowstorm.”

  “You’ve been talking to Kevin.”

  Jeremy turned back to the stove, which Felicity thought was probably a good idea because she guessed she would have been irritated by his expression. “I often talk to Kevin.”

  “You know what I mean.” She put down the glass. “Listen, Jeremy, I told Kyle Morgan to stay off my land, to stop digging. I was adamant about it. He gave me some lip and I told him I was posting the land. Two days later he was dead. But—”

  “There are no buts here, Lissie.”

  “Just hear me out. The morning after he died I went out to check that he hadn’t torn down any of the Posted signs, and they were still there, but so were footprints in the snow. I followed them and they went onto my property, up a hill and turned back and went out through Sasha’s lot.”

  “Just someone out walking,” he said. “This is going to be perfect.”